


The Dens of Snakes

by slythernim



Series: Harry Potter Without Harry Potter [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Durmstrang, Gen, Hogwarts Chamber of Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-05-18 23:43:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 59,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19345108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slythernim/pseuds/slythernim
Summary: Suppose Tom Riddle never bothers to show mercy, and Harry Potter dies with his parents? What would that mean for the world, to have no Boy-Who-Lived to save them? ("A couple of stubborn kids" just doesn't have the same ring to it.)Year 2: It's amazing how little Lucius Malfoy actually thought through his plan.





	1. Summer, 1992

After all the excitement with Quirrelmort, things returned mostly to normal, at Hogwarts and elsewhere. 

* * *

 

Hermione, being Hermione, passed her end-of-year exams with flying colours, though it cost her a nearly-sleepless week of panic. After that she slept for most of two days, and then Jarek (rolling his eyes) dragged her outside. Ostensibly they were watching Viktor win games of pick-up Quidditch while spectacularly outnumbered, but as Jarek wasn't much more of a fan of broomsticks than Hermione, they mostly played chess and enjoyed the cool onset of Norwegian summer. Chess, Hermione had found, was an unusually engaging pursuit when your chess pieces didn't speak the same native language you did (the ones she was borrowing from Viktor, of course, were Bulgarian).

Headmaster Karkaroff altered her end-of-year score report to give Muggle names for her subjects, so that she could show it to her parents; then she took a Portkey home and waited for her parents at the train station, quite as if she'd just taken a train there. It was still really weird, and horrible, that she was lying outright to her parents, but Hermione had trained herself not to think about it.  _It's this or not learn magic at all,_  she told herself sternly.  _And if I don't learn magic, I'll probably get murdered. So I have to learn magic._  And that was that, really.

(Her summer, plus or minus some peculiar interruptions, was occupied almost entirely by studying her secondhand, magically repaired Muggle textbooks. She would, after all, need to be prepared for her O-Levels in a few years; her parents would expect nothing less.)

* * *

Elsewhere, Ron and Neville found to their delight and relief that all six of the Gryffindors in their year had passed their exams with surprisingly good grades (Percy gave them a sarcastic comment or three in the general vein of "There's a  _reason_ people study, yes"). Neville spent most of the train ride home staring incredulously at his scores, which notably included a 102% Herbology mark, while everyone else argued around him about whether Ron had been given extra credit on his Defense exam for his adventure. Six in a compartment was a sensible number, and they were all friends now, for all that they had little in common. No one wanted to play the ostracization game anymore.

Parvati and Lavender made arrangements to visit one another over the summer, and everyone else exchanged assorted promises to write. Dean and Lavender, who both lived in Muggle houses, exchanged phone numbers, to the puzzled fascination of the rest of the compartment. After some extensive interrogation and counter-interrogation, it was concluded that "Fellytones are sort of like Floo, then!", and everyone giggled for assorted reasons and moved on.

And they all went home from Hogwarts, a little less childish than they had arrived.

* * *

Percy got his perfect OWLs, to absolutely no one's surprise (eleven of them, every subject but Divination). Oliver, who'd only passed Charms, Transfiguration, and Astronomy (he didn't particularly  _care_ about anything else), oscillated between congratulations and merciless teasing right up until they boarded the train, to the general amusement of everyone in the vicinity including Percy. Percy would probably normally have been more annoyed, but he was in too good a mood for his best friend's antics to even dent his cheer. He'd heard a rumour that the OWL examination board was going to start keeping exam results until a few weeks into the summer holiday, and he could hardly imagine having to wait so long.

"Swot," Oliver said affectionately, when Percy expressed this concern. Percy rolled his eyes. Their endless argument did not continue for the rest of the train ride, however, because Percy went to the prefects' meeting and failed entirely to return.

(A paranoid individual might have been concerned about this. Oliver, however, knew perfectly well that Percy was involved with a certain blonde Ravenclaw prefect. He also knew that if he mentioned it to the twins - or, for that matter, to anyone who  _might potentially_ tell the twins - he would get hexed into next century; so he sat and played Snap with Angelina and Alicia and grinned to himself, and said nothing.)

* * *

Augusta Longbottom had tea on alternate Sundays with Minerva McGonagall, a tradition faithfully maintained since they had graduated Hogwarts together (probably the last Slytherin/Gryffindor friendship to escape the building unscathed, sadly), so she already knew some of what had happened over the year with her grandson.

Minerva had told her, with some fascination, all about the transformation of the Gryffindor first years in the wake of Hermione Granger's departure. They had begun as a fragmented bunch of slackers who didn't get along, and by Christmas they had mutated into a stable, successful mutual support system. That mutual support system, astonishingly, had gotten them through their first-year exams with a higher class average than Minerva said she had seen in her House since the class-of-only-one-student that was grim Jonathan Fawley, who'd graduated in the spring of 1983.

Even having been so warned, Augusta could not help but be a little startled to see Neville smiling brightly as he bid his friends a good summer, and holding his exam scores in a way that suggested he was not ashamed of them. His smile went away quickly when his friends left, and he still stammered when he spoke, and she saw him jump like a frightened rabbit when someone jostled him accidentally; but progress was progress, she supposed.

* * *

Theodore Nott bid a vague farewell to his various classmates, or more accurately to Draco. Daphne was a  _girl_  even if she didn't have any brothers and would inherit her father's wealth, and the rest of the House were basically all Draco's minions. So Draco was the only one that mattered, really. Then he picked up his trunk and paced off quietly. He bowed politely to his father, ignoring the rush of other children jumping into their parents' arms (purebloods do not  _hug_ each other in  _public_ , ugh). Sensibly enough, Theo was expecting to be asked about his year. What he was  _not_ expecting was to be greeted by a rather alarming glower.

"Er - " he began hesitantly, almost instinctively stepping backwards again, frightened.

"Move," snapped old Jarred Nott, a command which pulled Theo into arm's reach as sharply as if he'd been Summoned. His father had never been particularly warm and supportive as a parent, and age (he was a contemporary of Abraxas Malfoy) had not helped; still, Theo wasn't used to this level of irritation. His father was angry about something.

He didn't get to ask until he was done coughing unhappily and trying not to vomit; practice didn't make Side-Along-Apparition significantly less unpleasant, at twelve. A house-elf handed him a cup of tea, and he drank it gratefully, leaning against the banister of the grand staircase while his father paced around looking angry. After that, he spent about five minutes trying to locate his courage (there was a reason the Sorting Hat had not offered him Gryffindor, he thought wryly). Then Theo said cautiously, "Father, what is wrong?"

What followed was an extended rant on several disparate subjects, all of which were contributing to his father's bad mood. He'd had to have his ring reforged  _three times_ since Halloween, he kept melting the bloody thing; Gringotts was refusing to perform the ennoblement ceremony even though all of the Potters (may they rest in eternal torment) had been dead for ten years, and it was ridiculous, because the Notts had more money than half the Noble Houses and Jarred was tired of Lord Greengrass making subtle jabs at his lack of title; speaking of which, bloody Greengrass was still refusing marriage contracts for his daughters to  _everyone_ , even the Malfoys; and he couldn't even complain about any of these things to Abraxas and Arcturus, because they were both ridiculously contagious with dragonpox and no one was allowed near them, which was probably Cassie's fault -

(Theo had hesitantly interjected at this point, lost, to ask who Cassie was, since he knew that Lord Arcturus Black's wife had been named Melania, and moreover was dead; his father had clarified that he was referring to Cassiopeia Black, Arcturus's cousin, who invented curses as a hobby and as a rule could be categorically blamed for all catastrophic magical incidents which even tangentially involved any Blacks)

\- and furthermore Lucius Malfoy was extremely smug because he knew he was about to inherit and it sort of made Jarred want to hit him repeatedly with Bone-Shattering Hexes until he shut up, which was a problem because Lucius was his nephew and that was not a sensible thing to be doing to people you were related to; and Arthur Weasley was actually getting a great deal of support for his stupid Muggle Protection Act, which was ridiculous and he would just assassinate the filthy Muggle-loving blood traitor if Ignatius Prewett wouldn't probably get him arrested; and speaking of Prewett, he's probably sleeping with Cassie and that was just  _unutterably irritating_ because you can't call scandal properly on Cassie Black, it's just  _not physically possible_ , you end up dangling over the side of a volcano somewhere pondering your life choices -

(Theo didn't like that mental image at all, but it was significantly preferable to picturing anything involving sex and Ignatius Prewett, who was pushing ninety, so he refrained from commenting)

\- and on top of all of that, he'd just gotten a letter from the Potions master at Durmstrang, congratulating him on the performance of his cousin's granddaughter, who had apparently placed in the top of her class on her third-year exams, which was  _ridiculous_ , because his cousin was dead and all his cousins' kids were dead and he had not at any point been informed that there was a kid going to Durmstrang, and nevertheless he had felt a sort of pride, and really, everything was ridiculous and no, he wasn't angry at Theo in particular, he just wished Theo wasn't  _twelve_ because that was really too young to be expected to deal with any of this.  _  
_

Theo had absorbed all that, and said, "Well - that last one we can deal with, right? Write to the kid and find out what's going on?" It  _would_ be cool to have a cousin at Durmstrang. Or ... whatever you would call your dad's cousin's granddaughter. Cousin once removed? Whatever.

Jarred Nott took a deep breath. "Yes," he said, "yes, we can do that."

* * *

"Mail for you, Dean," said his mother, handing him an envelope in exchange for the plate of toast he'd just handed her.

It was neatly addressed,  _  
_

_Ronald Weasley, c/o Dean Thomas,_ followed by their address. Dean was glad, suddenly, that he'd remember to put a return address on the letter he'd mailed for Ron. So he called Lavender. "Hey, Hermione wrote Ron back, do you have any idea how to hire a post owl?" he asked once he'd got hold of her, and gone through the ritual exchange of small talk and  _how's your summer going?_ s.

"Um ... I think Gringotts will do it?" Lavender offered. "I remember seeing a sign for that when we were exchanging money, I think."

So he'd caught a bus, when he had a spare Saturday, and paid the goblins a Sickle to mail the letter to the Burrow.

* * *

_June 28, 1992_

> Mr. Weasley,
> 
> An apology does me no good, you know. It cannot convince my parents to allow me to return to Hogwarts. I do not think I would even want to return, were I allowed; if nothing else, being forced to find a different school has at least provided me with classmates more pleasant than you.
> 
> Still, thank you.
> 
> Hermione J. Granger

* * *

(When Ron received this letter, he stared at it for a long time.)

* * *

_June 30, 1992_

> Miss Hermione Nott:
> 
> It has recently come to my attention that I and my son are not the only living members of the House of Nott, but that we also count you - descended of my late cousin Alfred - among our number. I congratulate you on your apparently-excellent academic performance at Durmstrang Institute, but I must say that I am deeply offended that you have not previously seen fit to inform me of your existence. As head of your House I insist that you attend us at the Nott Estate in Bristol, at tea-time on the 5th of July (this coming Sunday), to enlighten us as to your history.
> 
> I expect to see you then.
> 
> Jarred Nott, patriarch of the House of Nott

* * *

Hermione very nearly panicked when she read the letter from Jarred Nott, which had been delivered by a cruel-beaked, sharp-taloned owl that looked deeply offended by her failure to offer it an owl treat, despite the fact that she did not in fact own an owl and did not have any owl treats. Fortunately, it flew off before she could determine whether she was supposed to write a response, and she decided it probably would be best not to. That hadn't been an  _invitation_ so much as an  _order_ _,_ so a response seemed almost redundant.

She spent the next several hours fabricating a story involving one of her professors, visiting from Germany on research, inviting her to tea, which she delivered to her parents with her fingers crossed that they wouldn't demand to meet the professor in question. Fortunately, they were quite convinced of the acceptability of Durmstrang Institute after their meeting with Headmaster Karkaroff the previous winter, and having now seen her return home entirely unharmed with good grades.

The next source of panic would naturally have been  _how to get there_ , but fortunately, Hermione had already spent a considerable amount of time, after her unpleasant first experience with Portkeys, researching magical travel in Britain and elsewhere. So that Sunday, she summoned the Knight Bus, and politely asked it to take her to the Nott Estate in Bristol. The driver made her repeat this several times before he believed her; evidently delivering children to pureblood mansions was not something they were typically called upon to do. But they  _could_ do it, and she paid them in Sickles left over from the previous winter's shopping for books in Diagon Alley, and she clung to a wall and rehearsed her story in her head.

* * *

Theo paced around by the door; it was polite to answer in person for anyone who even remotely mattered, after all. His father was waiting in the sitting room, reading genealogy books and muttering to himself. Theo, meanwhile, was endlessly curious about this mysterious cousin from Durmstrang. Hopefully she'd be like Daphne - dignified and intelligent. She had to be intelligent, if she was doing so well in her classes, right? But then she could also be like Tracey, who was brilliant but sort of unpleasant to be around, thanks to her extremely annoying habit of correcting everyone's grammar all the time.

Merlin forbid she was anything like the rest of the Slytherin girls, who followed Pansy around like little ducklings, hanging on her every word just because she'd told them she was probably going to marry Draco, which wasn't even  _true_ , it wasn't like they had a proper contract or anything. Nobody did, the Greengrasses had thrown off the whole system because nobody that was anybody wanted to sign anything until they knew who was going to get Daphne and Astoria. They were unquestionably at the top of the list, especially now that Susan Bones had been confirmed for blood-traitor (she'd been hanging around with  _Muggleborns_ , even though she even had Ernie Macmillan in Hufflepuff with her). Ugh, everything was a mess.

Considering this train of thought, it is not entirely shocking that when he opened the door and encountered  _Hermione Granger,_ Theo jumped about a foot and made a rather undignified high-pitched yelping noise.  _Granger_ was a  _Muggleborn_ , from  _Gryffindor_ , she was the one who'd gotten withdrawn after the Troll Incident on Halloween, and Slytherin had celebrated because she'd spent the first two months of school showing them up in all their classes and they'd all hated her, she was  _definitely_ not  _related_ to him! "What the  _bloody he_ \- "

Granger took several very rapid steps and got very close to him. "Mister Nott," she said quietly, and very seriously, "I have recently earned a higher than perfect score in the third-year examination for Battle Magic at Durmstrang Institute by successfully performing a class-four Immolation Curse. I do not mean you or your father any harm, and I have no intention whatsoever of even slightly inconveniencing you. All I want is to continue attending school, if you are so spectacularly stupid as to ruin that for me,  _you will not enjoy my revenge_. Is that clear?"

Theo's mouth, previously prepared to spew a large number of insults followed by a demand that she cease her use of his family name immediately, snapped quite firmly shut. He'd grown up with ex-Death Eaters making up a large percentage of his social circle; he knew a credible threat when he saw one. He  _could_ tell his father, get her expelled from Durmstrang. She'd probably even get killed in short order if he did that, because nobody cared what happened to Muggleborns, especially not ones that didn't even go to Hogwarts. But he knew enough to know that Immolation Curses of class three and higher were conditional; you could cast them some time in advance, and trigger them without a wand or without even being anywhere near the person.

If she wasn't lying (which she wasn't showing any signs of), and she wasn't stupid (which he had been forced to admit, sometime last September, that she was not), she'd probably already cast it on him. Which meant that getting her killed would probably get  _him_ killed.

So he nodded.

Granger -  _Hermione,_ he'd have to call her by her bloody first name if she was going to use Nott for a surname - smiled brightly, quite as if she had not just threatened him with a curse he was fairly certain was illegal in Britain and some 38 other countries. She looked so  _pleased_ with herself, it was exactly that same stupid grin that she got when she answered a question perfectly in Potions, and there was no Professor Snape here to wipe it off her face by taking away points for being annoying. He was going to get her back for this. He  _was._ Just ... not right now. Because right now she was scary.

(He sort of wished he'd gone to Durmstrang. If it could make  _her_ scary, it was doing something right.)

* * *

In August of 1992, three of the eldest fixtures of the pureblood community died of dragonpox: Lord Abraxas Malfoy, Lord Arcturus Black, and Cassiopeia Black. There were huge articles about it in every newspaper, in which everyone competed to sound sufficiently sympathetic that none of the nobles would hex them senseless.

The transfer of power in the Malfoy family was smooth and barely noticeable; Lucius Malfoy took over for his father, and organized the funeral, and it was business as usual from there. They weren't significantly different people, as far as most people were concerned. The bigger concern, among the Noble families, was the House of Black. The only one of Arcturus' direct descendants still alive was Sirius Black, currently in Azkaban for a life sentence. This implied that power defaulted to the next line over, Cassie's brother's descendants - which was just Bellatrix Lestrange (also in Azkaban), Andromeda Tonks (disowned), and Narcissa Malfoy, in that order.

A spectacular legal battle immediately sprung into existence between Andromeda Tonks and Narcissa Malfoy, on account of the somewhat unclear rules about informal disowning and inheritance. This immediately generated a flurry of arguments between the blood purists and their opponents about whether it was remotely acceptable that Andromeda had been burned off the family tapestry for marrying Ted Tonks.  _That_ dragged Arthur Weasley's Muggle Protection Act into the spotlight, since one of its major components was a provision for the legal recognition of Muggle parents of magical children as being actually, y'know,  _people_ , and of course that horribly offended all the blood purists, and everything got even more complicated.

Then Lucius Malfoy and Arthur Weasley got into a fist-fight in Flourish & Blotts, and somebody got pictures, and then  _that_ was all over the  _Daily Prophet._ The subsequent scramble on all sides to downplay this event buried the original problem under enormous amounts of paperwork. After several months of politicians yelling at each other, in early August's Wizengamot session, Lord Edward Greengrass dryly suggested that maybe they should just ask Sirius Black, who technically was Lord Black even though he was in prison. This suggestion garnered universal agreement and much sage nodding ( _yes, of course, we should have thought of that_ ).

Andromeda and Narcissa exchanged extremely awkward glances. Andromeda didn't want to talk to Sirius because he'd betrayed the Potters; Narcissa didn't want to talk to Sirius because he'd personally killed several of her Hogwarts classmates during the War. Neither of them felt even slightly confident that he'd be receptive to that sort of inquiry.

"That's interesting," said the smirking Unspeakable. Eventually someone made a formal request that the Aurors ask, and in the middle of August, DMLE Director Amelia Bones personally walked down into the bowels of Azkaban to inquire.

"Black," she snapped, kicking the bars of his cell. The metal rang oddly in the Dementor-iced air; it was still cold down here, even though the Dementors were avoiding the shining silver light given off by Director Bones' Patronus.

Sirius looked up, eyes slightly unfocused, from where he'd been staring at an apparently arbitrary section of wall. "What?" His voice was scratchy with dust and disuse.

"Formal request," she said, ignoring the desire to punch him repeatedly until he died ( _you were the spy, they trusted you, Edgar and Helen died because of you_ ), "that you decide who is to act as regent of the House of Black, which you cannot head while serving a life sentence."

Sirius blinked a few times. Then he rasped, "I take it my grandfather is dead, then."

"Obviously. Forgive me if I do not mourn."

An odd expression crossed his face; Amelia had trouble identifying it. Sirius asked, "I can pick anybody?" Yes; technically, it didn't even need to be a blood relative. Amelia had been given the request in terms of "pick between Narcissa and Andromeda", but legally that wasn't actually the question. (And she was nothing if not compliant with the law.) She nodded. Sirius considered that.

He seemed, oddly, to be functioning relatively normally, if slowly. People usually went crazy down here within five years ... but Sirius had  _already_ been crazy. She'd been present when he was dragged in here ten years ago, laughing hysterically and flinging around wandless blasting curses. The curses had stopped when he'd got into proximity of the dementors - he likely wouldn't be capable now even if he were released - but the laughter hadn't. It haunted her, occasionally.

The laughter was gone now, drained out of him like the blood that failed to warm his pale skin. Sirius said, "Andromeda, then."

Amelia blinked. She had genuinely been expecting Sirius to name a Death Eater - or, cough, an  _ex-_ Death Eater, one of those who'd been "Imperiused" - or at least Narcissa, who was married to one. Why Andromeda? Oh, well, not her problem. She had her answer and she could go, far away from the reminder that Susan was orphaned because someone from the Order had given Edgar's schedule to the Death Eaters, because Edgar had trusted the wrong person, just like James and Lily Potter had. "Right. Thanks."

She was about to turn and go when Sirius spoke again. "Don't suppose you could get me a drink or something?" he said, his voice strained but somehow still weirdly flippant. Like he thought he deserved to pretend to be James Potter. "All I ever get is water."

( _Little brother, little brother, why you, Susan would have loved you so much._ ) "Go to hell," spat Amelia, and she turned and left. As fast as she could walk without running, because she didn't want to hear him talk anymore. Not another word. It didn't work, though. Over the sound of her boots clicking on the stone, the prisoners groaning and whining around her, the whistle of the wind, she could still hear his answer.

" _I'm already there!_ "


	2. Meet The Littlest Weasley (and - )

"Come on, come on!"

Spectacularly behind schedule, but miraculously not yet late enough to miss the train, the Weasleys sped through King's Cross, a gaggle of red hair and stress. "Hurry up," their mother was saying, chivying them along with their trolleys and trunks and pets. Ron had Scabbers safely in his pocket, but Hermes was not entirely pleased about the hurry, and was fluttering about unhappily as his cage was jostled about. The twins were telling Ginny outrageous lies about the Sorting Hat, which Percy and Ron had stopped trying to bother discrediting; her nervousness seemed to still be less prominent than her excitement, and she'd find out the truth soon enough.

They got through the barrier in such a hurried jumble that Percy tripped over Ron and sent them both sprawling, and sent Scabbers squeaking off at a panicked run. They could only vaguely hear the snickering of Fred and George as they dumped their things in the loading pile and scampered off into the crowd without further ado. Percy scrambled to his feet, ears burning, and dusted himself off; Ginny, giggling quietly, helped Ron up. "What's so funny?" he grumbled, red-faced, as they dragged their own things over to the pile. She pointed over his shoulder. Percy had, in his attempt to stride away purposefully, walked directly into one of the other prefects, a blonde girl who was now giggling at him as he rather shamefacedly followed her to the front of the train. "Oh," snorted Ron.

"C'mon c'mon, we've got to get on the train!" said Ginny, tugging on his sleeve as the whistle blew. Ron followed, and only after they'd joined Neville and Seamus in a compartment did he remember that he'd been planning not to let her sit with him. After all, he hadn't been allowed to sit with  _his_ older brothers on the train; Ginny ought to make her own friends. But by the time he'd opened his mouth to shoo his little sister away, she'd read Seamus' T-shirt (which was bright green and had back-to-back yellow K's on it, the logo of the Kenmare Kestrels). Then Ginny was off at a thousand miles an hour about the Kestrels' Keeper and Seeker, who had recently landed themselves in St. Mungo's with all three of the Ballycastle Bats' Chasers after a reportedly-spectacular bar fight, and "he was the only Keeper who consistently blocks Gwenog Jones, how's the reserve?" and "I bet you anything Holyhead wins the league this year," and so on.

Ron blinked, and sat down next to Neville as Seamus talked enthusiastically about the odds that Barry Ryan would recover in time for the second half of the season, and decided it wasn't worth it. "Neville," he said, opting to ignore the conversation about Quidditch (as he was wont to do whenever the discussion was about any team other than his beloved Cannons), "how was your summer, mate?"

Neville smiled a bit nervously. "Ehm ... pretty good, actually? Gran was pleased with my exam results, so she let me explore the greenhouse properly once I'd got my summer homework done." He scratched ruefully at his left hand with his right, showing Ron a still-red scar running across the back of his hand. "Turns out my great-uncle Algie's got fanged geraniums in there. He has some really nice fire lilies, too, though, and he let me help trim some of them!" Ron had no idea why lilies would be worth getting bitten by plants, no matter how pretty they were, but he figured he'd take Neville's word for it.

Besides, he had a question. "Isn't your great-uncle Algie the one who dropped you out a third-floor window?"

"Er ... yeah?" said Neville, puzzled.

Ginny interrupted herself mid-sentence to say, "He  _what_?", which made Seamus break into snickering. They had been in the middle of talking about one of the Ballycastle Chasers' "fantastic" skill at knocking people off their brooms, which made her indignant interruption sound extremely funny.

Neville seemed a bit surprised at her vehemence. "Erm ... well, for the longest time my whole family thought I was a Squib," he explained, "and so they were always trying to find proof one way or the other, and, this one time Uncle Algie was dangling me over a balcony and he got distracted and dropped me, and I bounced! Everyone was really pleased, and he bought me Trevor."

This story had sounded strange the first time Neville told it, and it sounded even stranger now that Ron thought about it again, especially with Ginny sitting there looking horrified. "But," he said slowly, "wouldn't you have  _died_ if you  _had_ been a Squib?"

Neville frowned, thinking. "Oh," he said, "yeah, I guess so?"

"But that's terrible!" burst out Ginny, evidently baffled that Neville wasn't indignant on his own behalf. "Squibs are people too, just like Muggles are! They should've tried something that wouldn't have  _killed you_ , if they really wanted to know that badly! This great-uncle of yours sounds like a terrible person!"

"Er," said Neville, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly, "well, see, technically since he's my grandfather's brother, he'd be Lord Longbottom if I died or if I was a Squib. And, um, purebloods, you know, they tend to be really ... " He made a vague, helpless gesture. " ... he figured it'd be better if I died, a lot of them think like that, you know? Like being a Squib is literally a fate worse than death, and - and it kind of is, isn't it?"

Ginny subsided, frowning. Like many purebloods, she had never seriously considered the question of what her life might have been like if she weren't magical. "Well ... I mean ... yeah, but ... but murder is still murder," she muttered, looking distinctly unnerved. Ron felt sort of the same way; they had always been taught that everyone was equally important, that being nonmagical (like Muggles) or having nonmagical parents (like Muggleborns) didn't make you  _not a person;_ that was one of the lessons their father had drilled into them ever since they were old enough to understand it. That was what he was having a fight in the Ministry over with Malfoy. But ... Squibs  _were_ awfully prone to throwing themselves off bridges and things, it was one of those horribly depressing things you found out about when there was an article in the  _Prophet_ about it when you were nine, and then after that you tried really hard to  _not think about_ it ...

Seamus was looking at all of them with an expression of great bemusement. "Purebloods are so  _weird_ ," he said.

* * *

Percy measured his steps slower so that Penelope, who was quite a bit shorter than he was, could keep pace, and smiled as he heard Hagrid yelling for the first years. "My little sister's starting this year," he said happily, "that's all of us!"

"Oh, wow," said Penelope, "that must be really weird for your mum, she hasn't not had any kids around since, what, before your brother Bill was born?" Percy nodded. "He was Head Boy when we were second years, right, so that makes him ... twenty-one? I wonder if there's studies on what the average is, you know, what the average split is between the time the eldest child is born and the youngest goes to Hogwarts ... it's probably doesn't  _quite_ correlate with the average number of kids ... " Penelope had only one sibling, a little brother who was just five, and had always been fascinated by the enormous Weasley family - though, of course, she was fascinated by almost everything else in the world, too.

Percy nodded. "I couldn't tell if Mum was really excited or really sad, actually," he admitted, and then after a moment's thought, offered, "maybe a little of both? Ginny's over the moon, though," he added, smiling. "She's been whining about not getting to come to Hogwarts since before she was old enough to pronounce it, and when Ron started - " He stopped very suddenly, eyes wide, and came to a halt in the middle of the path, staring at the carriages that performed the comforting ritual, every year, of ferrying them to the school while the first-years boated over the lake. Of course he knew what he was looking at, he'd gotten an O on his Care of Magical Creatures OWL, but that didn't really restore the sense of pleasant routine that had so abruptly deserted him.

"What's wrong?" asked Penelope in surprise, her faint glazed expression (the one that indicated she was half listening and half consulting the library in her head) disappearing and being replaced with one of concern.

In a very quiet voice, Percy said, "I can see the thestrals."

* * *

Percy was still very quiet when he rejoined the Gryffindors at the table in the Great Hall; mercifully, the twins were busy making faces at Ginny, who appeared to be glaring at them from the vicinity of the High Table, mouthing angrily  _it's just a hat!_ , and apparently fascinating the blond boy next to her, who had the sort of faint, permanently astonished expression that marked him for Muggle-raised, and was looking at her as if she were a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, or possibly a dragon. Ron wasn't paying attention, either; he was busy having a whispered conversation with Neville (something about how he'd lost Scabbers on the platform and somehow found him again in the entrance hall). Oliver noticed, though.

Oliver asked quietly, "You alright, Perce?", and Percy considered the question seriously before nodding. Yes, he would be fine. He probably wasn't going to tell his parents he could see thestrals now, though. _Bill and Charlie can see them_ , he thought,  _and they always say they wish they couldn't._

The Sorting seemed to go on forever; absently, Percy counted the students, and noted with interest that there were fewer than there had been last year. Hadn't Professor Vector said something about that last year, in Arithmancy class, when they'd been talking about population analysis? This Halloween marked the eleven-year anniversary of the end of the war; so  _this_ year's group would be much smaller, the few kids who'd been born in the very last year of the war, widely considered the worst. But next year there'd probably be something like twice as many.

This year that meant fewer new Gryffindors, he supposed, but that was alright, so long as one of them was Ginny; and it wasn't like the bright little chatterbox had any chance of belonging somewhere else. She was practically Bill in miniature, according to almost everyone, and he'd been a  _classic_ ideal Gryffindor.

This thought in mind, Percy was quite puzzled when Ginny's time under the Hat lengthened. The twins seemed to be having the same thought: they looked over at him, inquiring.  _What's she doing still up there?_ , that look asked. Ron, however, had a pensive expression that suggested he wasn't confused at all. Percy gave his youngest brother a curious glance. Ron made a face.

(Ron was thinking about his own Sorting.  _I wonder,_ he was thinking,  _if it's offering her Slytherin, like it did me._ And if she said yes, what would he do? She'd still be his little sister, of course, but - )

"GRYFFINDOR!"

( - moral dilemma over. Thank Merlin.)

Ginny sped over to the table beaming widely; the twins ruffled her hair; and everyone forgot about it.

* * *

_Dear Tom,_

_The Hat tried to put me in Slytherin, does that make me a bad person?_

**Of course not, dear heart. There are good Slytherins just like there are evil Gryffindors, even if the world likes to pretend there aren't. Let me tell you a story ...**

* * *

Penelope Clearwater had lost the draw.

She had no idea why anyone thought this draw needed to be performed with Exploding Snap cards, but that was Hogwarts for you.

At any rate, regardless of the deplorable state of her eyebrows, she was now the prefect in charge of the new Ravenclaw students. That meant she was in charge of chivying them all up the stairs to the seventh floor ("Which requires anywhere from two to nine staircases," she warned on the way up), and introducing them to the Tower knocker. In the morning, she'd be in charge of handing out schedules and being sure to point out Professor Flitwick: it was vitally important that no Ravenclaw student ever be heard to say something so stupid as "Which one's Flitwick?" on the first day of classes. Apparently, despite the Charms professor having wispy grey hair and more wrinkles than a Kneazle, first-years still occasionally mistook him for a student due to his height. Penelope was personally of the opinion that anyone so stupid did not deserve to be a Ravenclaw, but they had to keep up appearances. And of course, being the supervisory prefect meant that tomorrow night she'd have to show them how to get into the Ravenclaw private library behind the statue of Rowena.

It did  _not_ mean that she was responsible for doing anything  _else_.

She did not have to repeat herself. She did not have to give directions. She certainly did not have to answer the riddles for them. Rather, Penelope told them briskly, "If you don't know the answer to the riddle, I cannot help you," because you were supposed to figure it out yourself or with a friend. It wasn't the job of the older students to tell you. You eventually started to see the patterns in the answers, like learning a new language. By sixth or seventh year many Ravenclaws could answer the riddles without even really giving them any conscious thought, which never failed to impress the younger students. That effect didn't  _work_ properly if you just  _told_ the younger students the answers, so there was actually an official House rule that you weren't allowed to tell anyone the answer to the riddle if they weren't in your own class year.

She explained this very sternly. She also explained to the anxious-looking first-years the unofficial corollary to the rule, which was that you really shouldn't ask an older student for help with  _anything_ , because in Ravenclaw you were expected to be smart enough to figure it out yourself.

It did not occur to Penelope, though perhaps it should have, that there were some things that eleven-year-olds really  _weren't_ capable of dealing with themselves. Sometimes there were things you really oughtn't try to make them handle alone. But she had spent too long absorbed in the culture that everyone in Ravenclaw was self-sufficient - they were proud of it. They exulted in it, really, with their carefully cultivated smug expressions and calculated clique-ism. So when Penelope saw little blonde Luna Lovegood sitting quietly in a corner, not talking to anyone, patching together a Charms textbook with Spellotape and trying not to cry, it simply didn't occur to her that anyone ought to do something.

It also didn't occur to Penelope that this was why little Luna Lovegood spent less and less time in the common room as time wore on. Penelope wasn't thinking about it very hard; she had NEWT classes all of a sudden, and like any proper Ravenclaw (or Percy, bless him), she was taking as many of them as her schedule allowed. She was busy, and had never learned to pay attention to such things. Penelope, therefore, simply assumed that Luna must be having trouble with the passwords, when she thought about it, and then dismissed the thought in favour of homework. She might have done something, had she known, because Penelope Clearwater was not a  _bad_ person; but though she was, perhaps, the most observant of the six Ravenclaw prefects, this was not a high bar to reach. She did not notice; and she did nothing.

The House of Ravenclaw went on cheerfully mocking strange little Luna with her bottle-cap necklaces and her mismatched shoes and her funny ideas.

And so Luna Lovegood took to avoiding every part of the castle frequented by the members of Ravenclaw House; and eventually this took her to a run-down bathroom that no one ever went to. There, she could do her homework without having ink dumped on it, and read her books in peace, and make jewelry, and write letters to her father.

( _Dear Daddy, I am learning lots. Professor Flitwick, our Head of House, is very nice, and he says he remembers you set him on fire by accident once. I think he has grown his beard back fine since then, though. I made you a chain for your glasses so you don't keep losing them. Tell Mum happy birthday for me when you go to see her this week. Love, Luna.)_

She didn't mind Myrtle, who kept the others away. Nor did Myrtle mind her presence, once she'd had a few days to get used to it.

Myrtle was a Ravenclaw outcast, too, after all; they got along.


	3. Interlude

_"If Voldemort is still alive in some form, Severus,_

_and I think it would be unrealistic of us to assume that he is not,_

_... then so, too, is Harry Potter."_

* * *

This was not an inaccurate guess; Albus Dumbledore's guesses are rarely wrong.

It was, however, perhaps more  _optimistic_ than it ought to have been.

Because there  _is_ a Harry Potter, and Harry Potter isn't  _dead,_  exactly; that bit's true enough. If you go to Godric's Hollow, what you would find there if you could pass through the Fidelius Charm isn't a  _ghost_. It's a little more solid; it resists being walked through, like very thick fog. It has colour; it has jet-black hair and bright, too-wide green eyes. It can speak, after a fashion. It could possess people, had it the willpower or the inspiration to try.

But it isn't  _alive,_ either, not really. It doesn't age; it is forever a year old. And if you asked anyone, anyone at all, whether they thought this was  _life,_ they would all say no. It doesn't live.

It only wafts about, forever crying in its faint, high-pitched voice:

" _Mama?"_


	4. A Distinct Shortage of Celebrities

_September 19, 1992_

> Dear Hermione,
> 
> We've been studying more, because Neville said that we should make sure our class average is at least as high as it would have been if you were still here and I think he's right. McGonagall looked at us funny when we told her that, but she says she thinks we managed it. Anyway we're trying to be more like you but because we were being awful we don't really know that much about you except that you were way better at classes than any of us, so, I thought I would ask.
> 
> Do you have any suggestions for how we can be better?
> 
> Ron Weasley

* * *

_September 30, 1992_

> Mr. Weasley,
> 
> I strongly encourage you to be more like your brother Percy.
> 
> In specific: follow the rules; do your homework; listen to your professors; help younger students with their work.
> 
> Hermione Granger.
> 
> P.S. I never got to thank Percy for saving my life. Please tell him not to feel guilty for my withdrawal; I am now learning magic elsewhere, and in any case it was not his fault.

* * *

"Guys! Guys, wait up!"

Ginny would have banged her head against the wall in frustration if they weren't outside, at the sound of Colin Creevey's high-pitched voice behind them. Not that she didn't like him, he was a good kid and it wasn't  _his_ fault he didn't know anything about magic, but, well, they were halfway to the greenhouses, where they'd be having Herbology with the Ravenclaws, and he had only just made it out the front doors. "Do you think," Ginny asked Demelza Robbins, who was walking beside her, "that he'll  _ever_  figure out that he could be on time for things if he didn't keep following Lockhart around?"

Demelza said hesitantly, "Probably not?", in a voice which suggested she was a little confused about her roommate's annoyance. Demelza would probably have been joining in Colin's quest to photographically document every second of Gilderoy Lockhart's existence, had Ginny not kept forcibly dragging her to class.  _Honestly_ , did no one have any sense? She'd been impressed too, of course, she'd been swooning like everyone else, but Tom had set her straight ( _Dearest Ginevra, you ought to be better than that_ ) and she was now, apparently, the only sane person in her class year. Or possibly in the entire female half of the school and then some. Colin had only barely caught up by the time they reached the greenhouses, and Demelza only managed to about half-way dim her excitement as she said, "Did you get any good pictures, Colin?"

"Oh, yeah!" beamed Colin breathlessly. "I have Professor Lockhart at breakfast, and walking up the stairs, and talking to Draco Malfoy, and talking to Professor McGonagall, and - "

"Did you get any pictures of him without his toupee?" inquired a curious voice that Ginny thought sounded vaguely familiar, interrupting Colin's tirade. As Demelza and Colin were blinking in startled confusion, Ginny turned around. Standing behind her, fiddling with what looked like a half-finished string of Butterbeer bottle caps, was a blonde girl that Ginny recognized as the only daughter of the wizard who lived a few miles from the Burrow, in that funny chess-piece-shaped tower. "He hides fish under it, you know, that's why Mrs. Norris follows him around all the time."

Approximately thirty seconds passed, in baffled silence. Lockhart didn't have a toupee, right? Colin and Demelza were exchanging confused glances, clearly both unsure of how to respond. Once the silence had gone on long enough, Ginny, grinning widely, said, "You just actually got them to shut up!" She applauded, only about half-sarcastically. "You are my new favourite person. Luna, right?" Luna nodded, a faint smile creeping across her face. Ginny held out her hand. "I'm Ginny Weasley, and these nutcases are Demelza Robbins and Colin Creevey. Demelza, Colin, I believe I've just discovered the only other sane person in this room, except maybe Professor Sprout," who indeed was in the middle of lecturing a pair of Ravenclaw boys who were arguing about whether Lockhart would sign their books since they'd missed the Diagon Alley signing. "Say hello to Luna Lovegood."

"Um ... hello," said Demelza, as Ginny and Luna shook hands. Colin seemed as if he were entirely too confused to speak.

Disagreements about the quantity of hair and/or competence owned by their Defense Professor notwithstanding, Luna turned out to be an excellent choice for a fourth member of their Herbology group.

* * *

"He can't even handle  _pixies!_ " complained Ron, throwing up his hands in disgust as they left the Defense classroom. "I  _told_ you he's useless! I bet Hermione's smarter than he is!"

"I think  _you_ _'re_ smarter than he is," pointed out Neville, rubbing his ear ruefully. He had a reddened bite mark where a pixie had ducked his attempt to grab it and latched itself to his ear. Ron had managed to direct the five of them in such a way as to corner the pixies and herd them back into their cage with Impediment Jinxes, but it had not been a task without injury for anyone (except Seamus, who had a surprisingly agile dodge).  _  
_

Ron laughed. "Yeah, okay, point."

Parvati sniffed. "He was just trying to test us," she said haughtily, "and we did fine, didn't we?"

"Yeah, I'm sure he wouldn't've made us do anything really  _dangerous_ ," agreed Lavender.

Dean said dryly, "Both of your speaking privileges are revoked until you stop having a crush on our Defense Professor."

Ron, Neville, and Seamus all giggled most of the way to their next class, with Parvati and Lavender glaring indignantly at them.

* * *

_October 10, 1992_

> Dear Hermione,
> 
> Percy says to tell you he was just doing his job, and he hopes you are doing well at your new school. I'm pretty sure he was glad to hear it, though. (He broke a bunch of rules and fought You-Know-Who at the end of last term, but Dumbledore seemed to think it was a good call, so I guess he is probably still a good example.)
> 
> Where are you going?
> 
> Ron Weasley

* * *

_October 21, 1992_

> Mr. Weasley,
> 
> That is none of your business.
> 
> Hermione Granger

* * *

_Dear Tom,_

_This is awful. Everyone spends all their time going on and on about Lockhart, how am I supposed to convince anyone I'm any good at anything if they're all busy obsessing about this gigantic prat? No one pays any attention to me, not even my friends! It'd almost be nice to have another celebrity around, just so he wasn't getting ALL the attention.  
_

**_Almost?_ **

_Well, if there was another one he'd probably be just as annoying as Lockhart. I mean, everyone always says he's such a hero, but he doesn't actually act like one in real life - Seamus Finnegan says he let loose a bunch of pixies in the second-years' class, and ran off instead of helping. Are all "heroes" like that?_

**_Most celebrities are not really heroes, dear Ginevra. They do not deserve your interest._ **

_So, do you suppose that if the Potters were alive, they'd be just as -_

**_Who?_ **

* * *

"We  _actually_ fly on  _broomsticks?"_  said Colin rather shrilly as they arrived at the field for the first of their broomstick lessons. They'd be having that lesson with the Hufflepuff first years. Normally the doubles schedules were the same every year, having been worked out hundreds of years ago. Gryffindors would have Potions and broomstick lessons with the Slytherins, Herbology and History of Magic with the Hufflepuffs, Astronomy and Charms with the Ravenclaws, and they'd have Transfiguration and Defense Against the Dark Arts in single houses. But this year it'd been changed, because of the incident in last year's first broomstick-riding class. So now they were having Herbology with Ravenclaw and Charms with Slytherin, because the schedule had had to be shuffled to accommodate having broomstick lessons with the Hufflepuffs instead. (Ron was very proud of himself for causing this.) "Ginny,  _seriously?_  You're not just putting me on? I mean, once you told me about Floo, I figured broomsticks were just a  _joke_  - "  _  
_

"Yeah, no, we really do fly on broomsticks," said Ginny, giving her friends a puzzled look. Demelza had looked almost as confused, which was odd, since Ginny could have  _sworn_ she'd shown them her copy of  _Which Broomstick?_ at some point. "Were you guys even  _listening_ when I explained about Quidditch, or were you busy staring at Lockhart?"

"Um, probably that second thing," said Demelza apologetically.

Ginny sighed, and decided that an extended argument was probably not worth it, since Madam Hooch was now yelling at them to line up and pick a broomstick. "Hold out your right hand," the flying instructor barked, "and say, 'UP!', like you mean it."

The air was at once filled with cries of "Up!" and sometimes "Hey, it worked!" and (much more frequently) "Why isn't this working?", which was shortly followed by at least three people in Hufflepuff saying "Diggory says - ", which Ginny decided to ignore in favor of making sure none of her classmates got themselves hurt like Neville Longbottom had last year. Demelza, surprisingly, had gotten her broom into her hand nearly as fast as Ginny had, although she'd said earlier she'd never flown one; Ginny grinned at her. Colin, however, looked  _extremely_ nervous. This did not improve even once he, and everyone else, had managed to mount his broom. The poor kid looked as if he might faint. "It'll be fine, Colin," said Ginny as reassuringly as she could, "nobody's gotten  _really_ hurt flying a broom at Hogwarts since, like, forever. Neville only broke his wrist - "

"He  _did_?" squeaked Colin, his eyes wide.

Okay, so that had not been a good choice of reassuring phrases. "Yeah, but Madam Pomfrey can fix that kind of thing in seconds - Eeep!" Ginny almost dropped her broom as she noticed that Madam Hooch was standing less than a foot away from her, giving her a Sharp Look. Clearly, the instructor had been trying to get her attention for some time. "Sorry, Madam Hooch!"

It transpired that Ginny was not distributing her weight correctly, but rather was sitting much too far back on the broomstick, as if she thought she were twice her own size. "Um," said Ginny. She glanced at Demelza, who appeared to be trying  _very hard_ not to accidentally insult anyone while being completely delighted that she'd not needed any correction. "In my defense, I learned this by  _watching_ Charlie, he didn't teach me anything, and he  _is_ about twice my size ... " She trailed off; Madam Hooch had ignored her utterly, and stalked down the line to fix Colin. Ginny sighed. "Good job, Demelza. Are you sure you've never done this before?"

"Pretty sure," beamed Demelza.

Ginny's pride suffered in silence for about an hour thereafter. She was  _trying_ to be pleased that her friend seemed to be doing just as well as her despite  _not_ having practiced for years in secret, but it still hurt a little. It was all very simple exercises - how to go up and down, how to speed up and slow down - but still ... So, much as she disliked her own jealous feelings, she still felt  _much_ better when the final activity of the lesson was learning to brake quickly, because that was the sort of thing you should know how to do before you went flying anywhere without supervision. Ginny was the only one who neither hit herself in the face with her broom handle nor fell off.

Still, she resolved to practice more, whenever she had a chance.

* * *

The Halloween decorations seemed oddly muted this year, which perfectly suited the mood of the second-year Gryffindors, all of whom were a little gloomy. This was the anniversary of the day they had very nearly gotten Hermione Granger killed, and they were all quietly wondering to themselves whether they were really better people, or if they were just pretending to be. It wasn't as if they could ask her; she was gone, and wasn't coming back. None of them were much inclined to speak to anyone, nor pay much attention to their surroundings.

Ron Weasley was frowning in the general direction of the Slytherin table, wondering if Hermione would have been better or worse off if he had taken the Sorting Hat up on its offer. He wouldn't have been there in Charms class, they had Charms with the Ravenclaws. And  _that_ day  _he_ 'd been the one to say thoughtless, hateful things, the things that made her run off to the washroom and straight into the waiting club of an angry mountain troll ...

Percy Weasley, who firmly believed that he could have saved her well enough for her parents not to have freaked out if only he'd practiced  _useful_ spells instead of just the ones that would be on his exams, was sitting quietly as well, his gaze abstracted. He was wondering what he would do if some other young student were in danger, if his duties as a prefect were called upon again. The rules said you fetched a teacher, his common sense said there often wasn't time; for all that he'd spent a year wondering what he could have done better, he knew that if he had kept running down to the dungeons for McGonagall, Hermione Granger would be dead.  _No one can force you to be a hero, Mr. Weasley._ (But what if there were no one else to do it? What if it was your job? What then?)

Fred and George Weasley were plotting a prank on the Slytherin table, in the conspicuous absence of the Bloody Baron (and indeed the entire ghost population). When they did look up from their murmuring to Lee Jordan, they looked at their brothers, puzzled.

Consequently, when Colin Creevey looked curiously at Demelza Robbins, sitting next to him, and said, "Have you seen Ginny?", and she shook her head and said that her roommate had not been feeling well today, none of the Weasleys were paying any attention to them at all.

* * *

Draco Malfoy got there first, and he was grinning widely, for all that the hem of his robes was getting wet in the flood, as he read the sign aloud. Looking happier than he'd ever been, he yelled to the other Houses, "You'll be next, Mudbloods!"

For there hung Mrs. Norris, stiff as a board, and the still-wet blood shining on the stone wall, reflecting off the puddles of water on the floor.

**THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED**

**ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.**


	5. Dead Roosters & Shattered Broomsticks

_November 1, 1992_

> Dear Hermione,
> 
> I'm sorry. Parvati says I was "tactless." I am still not very good at this. I hope you are having a good term, wherever you are.
> 
> What would you do if Mrs. Norris (Filch's cat) got Petrified? Last night they found her after the feast with a threatening message about the Heir of Slytherin painted on the wall.
> 
> Ron Weasley

* * *

_Dear Tom,_

_I can't remember Halloween._

**_Wasn't it Halloween just recently?_ **

_Yes, it was two days ago, and Demelza says I slept through the feast - apparently I told her I wasn't feeling well - but I don't remember anything, not even going to bed. Did I write anything then?_

**_On that day? Yes, I think you told me you were very tired and I told you you ought to go to bed early. You are overworking yourself, dear Ginevra._ **

_But why can't I remember it? I had red paint all down my front when I got up, and I usually have a pretty good memory._

**_Red paint? Sounds like a classic example of accidental exhaustion magic._ **

_What?_

**_Magic doing strange things when you are unusually tired. Didn't you tell me your brothers had a story like that from last year?_ **

_Oh. Yeah, they did. Only, Percy could remember the whole thing, he wrote up a list and everything, Percy likes making lists. How come he could remember and I can't?_

**_He is older than you. Is this the one you said fought the Dark Lord?_ **

_Oh, yeah, I guess so. He doesn't like to talk about it._

* * *

_November 12, 1992_

> Dear Mr. Weasley,
> 
> That is an interesting problem. Thank you for sharing it with me, although I am still rather glad I am not there to deal with it in person.
> 
> First, transcribe the message so that you have it for reference if and when the wall is cleaned, if that hasn't happened already. (If it has, get it down as soon as possible as exactly as you can remember.)
> 
> Next, research the following topics:
> 
> \- Who or what is the Heir of Slytherin? Is it likely to be a student?
> 
> \- Does anyone know if Filch or Mrs. Norris had done anything unusual immediately before the attack?
> 
> \- Do you have Mandrakes at Hogwarts? According to one of my professors they can be used to make a potion that cures Petrifaction.
> 
> Note that Petrifaction, although easiest achieved deliberately with a Petrifaction Curse, is a relatively common result of casting lethal curses poorly. This may suggest that your culprit is young and inexperienced.
> 
> I will be glad to dispense further suggestions if you give me the answers to these questions.
> 
> Hermione Granger

* * *

"Morning, Hagrid!" said Neville cheerfully, as Ron failed spectacularly at the attempt not to get knocked to the ground by an excited Fang. While his redheaded friend was laughing and being slobbered on, he added, "Are you going to go see the game today? We're playing Slytherin, you know."

Hagrid helpfully picked up Fang by the collar, freeing Ron to join them at the table. "Nah, I don' think I'll have time," Hagrid said apologetically, reaching for the teapot and discovering to his mild dismay that he still had a handful of enormous boarhound. He set Fang down again, causing Neville to acquire a lapful of Fang's head, and located a stack of enormous coffee-mug-sized teacups to start pouring. This was a usual ritual, Saturday morning tea, which had previously been a bit sporadic, though Hagrid was always delighted to see them. Ron and Neville were now doing it with more consistency now that it gave them an excuse to not be anywhere near Lavender and Parvati and their glossy copies of  _Witch Weekly_ with Lockhart on the front. The groundskeeper explained, "Gotta fix the fence, sommat's been killin' my roosters."

Ron and Neville exchanged puzzled glances. "Your roosters? Who'd do that?" asked Ron. "I mean, it's not like you're even close enough to the castle that anyone could hear them in the morning." As there were roosters at the Burrow, he somewhat understood the potential desire to murder them for being loud early in the morning, but he couldn't think of any  _other_ reason anyone would want to kill the otherwise completely harmless animals.

"Wait, why  _do_ you have roosters, then?" asked Neville, confused.

Hagrid raised an eyebrow at Neville. "Yeh need two kinds 'a chickens to make eggs, yeh know."

While Neville was turning an interesting shade of bright red, Ron said, "No, seriously, who does that? Just randomly murdering chickens? That's such a weird thing to do even if you wanted to be evil on purpose."

There was a pause, during which Hagrid frowned puzzledly, and then eventually said, "I don' think it's a  _person_ , Ron."

The redhead blinked. " ... oh," he said. "I just assumed ... that was stupid. Is there stuff in the Forest that could kill chickens?"

Hagrid frowned thoughtfully. "Well, that's the problem," he said. "The centaurs could, o'course, but I asked Magorian an' he said it wasn' them, an' of course Aragog wouldn' do that neither - "

"Aragog?" asked Ron curiously. He'd met Magorian, briefly, and recalled there having been a Ronan and a Bane, but that name he did not recognize. "Is that one of the centaurs?"

"No, he's an acromantula. Big spiders, right clever, there's a whole colony in the - what?" Ron's eyes had gone unnaturally wide, and his face very pale, at the information that there were giant spiders in the Forbidden Forest, but Neville had just burst out laughing. Hagrid was now staring at him in confusion. People did tend to be alarmed by the idea that their were acromantulas in the forest, that was why he always appended an assurance that they were perfectly civilized right after mentioning it to anyone, but  _laughter_ was a new one. "Er ... "

" _Giant spiders!_ " Neville gasped through giggles, "Of  _course_ there are giant spiders!"

(Neville, you see, had just figured out what had traumatized the Weasley twins.)

" ... righ'," said Hagrid, looking slightly unsettled, "anyway, Aragog wouldn' do that, he an' his family keep ter themselves. Unicorns don' eat meat. The Hogwarts thestrals don' hunt outside the Forest, an' anyway they'd  _eat_ the roosters. There's a bunch 'a things what  _could_ kill 'em, but nothin' I can think that  _would_."

"I guess it could be whatever killed Mrs. Norris," said Ron, still looking a little queasy.

"Petrified," corrected Neville. "Remember, Dumbledore said she wasn't actually dead."

"Oh," said Ron, sounding not at all pleased to be reminded, "right."

Eventually they'd drunk all the tea and still not thought of anything, except to suggest that Hagrid should probably just ask Dumbledore because Dumbledore knew everything, and it was time to go watch the Quidditch game.

* * *

" _Draco Malfoy?_ " said Fred. "What'd he do, pay off Flint?" asked George.

"He could just be a good flier," pointed out Katie reasonably, "couldn't he?"

"This is the kid that  _Ron_ wrestled off his broom," pointed out Fred. "On the first day of flying lessons!" added George.

"Ron could also be competent," said Percy, "I mean, he is a Weasley, and even  _I_ can fly."

"No, the twins are right," said Oliver, striding into the locker room looking grim. "He did pay off Flint. The whole Slytherin team's got Nimbus 2001's."

There was a shocked silence. The entire team exchanged unhappy, worried glances. There was no question that they were  _better_ than Slytherin; they'd only lost last year by seventy, and Percy had been both inexperienced and completely unenthused. The rest of the Slytherin team was the same still, and they had had every confidence that they'd do fine. But not with that kind of equipment gap; the twins could probably manage, since their Cleansweep Fives could certainly keep pace with Bludgers and that was all they needed, but Alicia's Comet 220 was the fastest the Quaffle part of the team had, and it would be practically crawling next to the new Nimbus.

"Right," said Percy briskly, "we'll just have to take a leaf out of Ron's book, then, won't we?"

"Um," said Alicia, "what?"

Angelina grinned. "He means, if we can't outrun them, we knock them out of the sky."

* * *

Because they were so entirely outmatched in speed, it took some maneuvering for them to enact their plan, but the Gryffindors were not strangers to strategy. Not for nothing at all did Oliver spend hours drawing complicated wiggly diagrams, even if the team tended to sleep through most of them. They didn't usually  _need_ most of his complicated diagrams, because it was usually simple enough. But this one ... this one would be complicated.

So the first part of the game was spent being repeatedly outraced. Oliver only blocked two of the seven shots on goal, in exchange for two goals by Angelina and one by Alicia. The Slytherin stands were going wild; fifty to twenty was better than Slytherin had done in a long time against Gryffindor. The last few years they'd simply won by virtue of Terrence Higgs being better than whoever Oliver had dragged onto the field to try to be Charlie Weasley that year; the rest of their team tended to be outmatched. But now they were  _winning_ , and Percy wasn't  _that_ good, so everyone was thinking Malfoy was probably not going to have any trouble getting to the Snitch first, not with a Nimbus 2001 to Percy's old Nimbus 1000. Really their only chance was for Percy to get lucky, because if they kept playing, they were just going to dig themselves deeper into the whole that the first forty-five minutes had created.  _  
_

Seamus, who had just explained all of this to Dean, looked at Ron curiously. He ought to know all of this, with three of his brothers on the field, but Ron looked surprisingly ... not worried. "Do you know something we don't?" asked Seamus in confusion. Ron had started to grin.

"Yep," said Ron. He'd been watching the game with a strange, abstracted frown on his face for some time, tracking the players' movements around the field and murmuring to himself silently. "They're about to do something cool." Ron pointed at Angelina, who was inscribing a vertical loop just to the Gryffindor side of the middle of the field. "She's been chasing Flint at weird angles all game, so has Alicia, and Katie's been deliberately distracting the Slytherins while they're doing it, which means they don't want them to notice. If I had a Galleon, I'd bet you one that they've been trying to sort out where on the field Angelina can hit Flint from when he's moving faster than she is. And now she's stopped, I think she's figured it out. And the twins have been missing Montague by steadily  _less and less,_  I'm pretty sure they're adjusting fast. Look," he pointed at Alicia, "she just signalled something to Fred, I dunno what any of those hand-signs mean but I'll  _bet_ it means  _we're ready_."

Whatever the signal had been, the twins repeated it, drawing acknowledging nods from Oliver and Percy. Then they proceeded to pretend as if nothing in particular had happened; the team all went on with what they were doing, which mostly was trying not to lose too badly. Katie got hold of the Quaffle long enough to score on Bletchley, and Oliver managed to block five of the eight shots made on him, bringing the score to eighty-thirty. Alicia had just had the Quaffle wrenched from her hand by a green bolt that was Warrington when Percy's head turned very suddenly, and he put two fingers to his mouth and emitted a piercing whistle. Alicia was the closest to being able to match the other team, but as she wheeled they were already pulling away from her, headed towards Oliver at speeds she could not match. Warrington tossed the Quaffle to Flint, just in time to be smacked in the gut by a Bludger. Bole promptly sent the iron ball shooting towards Katie, who ducked it and watched with a grin as George sent it off after the other Bludger, which Fred had just forced Malfoy to duck under. Flint, holding the Quaffle, made a rude gesture in the general direction of the twins, and kept on his course, arrowing straight for the goal posts. Montague spiralled off to block Katie as she dove in sideways, yelling something no one in the stands could hear.

Percy was shooting across the field at a speed which suggested he was aiming for something in particular. Montague spat something at Katie that was almost definitely a racial slur (Katie's parents were Muggleborn), and he was laughing along with Flint as the Slytherin Captain dodged a Bludger again and leaned back to launch a Quaffle at the goalposts, whereupon he noticed Percy mid-dive and Malfoy still recovering from dodging two Bludgers in quick succession, and opened his mouth to yell, "MA - "

\- and that was when Angelina Johnson shot past him diving straight for the ground, and grabbed the handle of his broomstick on the way down.

You see, flying to collide is a foul. Grabbing someone's broomstick tail to slow them down is also a foul.

Grabbing the broomstick  _handle_? Often effective when fighting laterally for a Quaffle, and technically legal.

Flint's attempt at a warning to his Seeker turned into a shriek as a handspan-wide segment of his broomstick was separated from the rest, and he (and the remaining parts of his broomstick) went into an uncontrolled downward spin. Angelina, braking hard, still hit the ground at a respectable speed, sending up a plume of dust and dirt and sand that would have done a landmine proud. And Percy Weasley, who had had almost a minute's lead on poor confused Draco Malfoy, snatched the golden Snitch out of the air. As the Gryffindor stands exploded, Ron, whose friends had been looking more and more dubious as the game wore on, said smugly, "Called it."

As the team landed around Angelina, they noticed with some concern that she was bleeding rather profusely. She'd broken her leg on impact with the ground, and many of the pieces of Flint's broken broomstick were embedded rather firmly in her right hand. She was, however, grinning hugely, in the general direction of the scoreboard, which was blinking GRYFFINDOR: 180, SLYTHERIN: 80. "That," she said, "was  _totally_  worth it."

* * *

The first professor on the scene, of course, was Gilderoy Lockhart.

If you were someone who had any accurate estimation of his competence - that is,  _not_ Angelina - you would probably have predicted what happened next. The twins certainly did; they both tried to object to his presence, but not quickly enough. Angelina would, much later, evince the opinion that instead of being flattered and smiling as 'Professor' Lockhart attempted to repair her broken leg, she ought to have punched him in the face with her handful of wood splinters. This, however, she did not do. So, naturally, she had to be carried up to the hospital wing with all the bones in her leg gone, to be lectured by Madam Pomfrey and prescribed a large bottle of Skele-Gro and at least a full night's rest.

Once they had all been kicked out, Fred and George Weasley felt it was their solemn duty to sneak into the hospital wing  _expressly_ to properly convey the phrase  _we told you so._ Specifically, by creating some mayhem in the Hospital Wing. A dose of Madam Pomfrey being unusually angry, they figured, would be a good way to point out to Angelina that she shouldn't get herself stuck there overnight if it could possibly be avoided. A sensible person might have pointed out that they themselves had spent a day in the hospital wing the previous spring, and their brothers had been there longer. But the twins would have replied to this, in classically Gryffindor style, with the argument that that particular event had not exactly been  _avoidable_ in the way that getting injured by letting Lockhart try to Heal you was. There was a fine line, they would argue, between bravery and stupidity! (They hadn't yet realized that they didn't actually know where that line  _was_.)

This argument having failed to move them, a sensible person might then have pointed out that whatever had Petrified Mrs. Norris might still be in the castle somewhere. They might have pointed out that sneaking out alone at night was dangerous, horribly dangerous, and really, Fred, George, what would your mother say?  _  
_

But the only sensible person in Gryffindor was gone, and Fred and George had not yet acquired the habit of checking all actions against the rule  _What would Hermione Granger do?_ , not like their little brother and his friends. And so they carried on with their ridiculous plan, and only much later would they learn their lesson.

* * *

The Weasley twins crept down the steps from Gryffindor Tower. George was holding the Marauders' Map, focused mostly on their own location and on Angelina, whose only company in the Hospital Wing was a lightly dozing mediwitch. Flint had hit the ground quite hard thanks to his broken broomstick, but he'd had the sense to threaten Lockhart with grievous injury, and when he was delivered to the hospital wing, Madam Pomfrey had repaired his various injuries in approximately thirty seconds and sent him off with a stern look.

The problem with the Marauders' Map, which the twins had not yet noticed, was that it focused on places you wanted to look at, without much breadth. If you were focused on things  _near_ you, it wouldn't show you anything much farther away. So, they didn't notice that a few hallways behind - just enough to be outside their vision, because he, of course, knew  _exactly_ where the line was drawn - they were being followed by Scabbers the rat. Even now that he was no longer Wormtail, he still felt the burning curiosity that had driven him to become what he was; and so he wanted to know where they were going, and why.

The twins had no idea. They were not particularly worried, since their usual concern was Mrs. Norris and she, conveniently, was not currently capable of stalking anyone. Still, it was good practice to use the Map at all times when you were sneaking around, and so they were both keeping an eye on it, walking close enough together that they could both see it.

So they did notice, when something changed, when something showed up too quickly for it not to be concerning. When they were quite close to the hospital wing, two dots materialized on the map a hallway over from them, too close to have been the usual wandering-into-the-observable-zone effect that you got when you were focused on an area with fuzzy edges instead of walls. They'd just showed up, very suddenly. One was labeled  _Esther_ , which - experience suggested - meant it was an animal (since people had two names - owls, for example, showed up with only one). The other was labeled  _Tom Riddle_.

The twins exchanged a puzzled and rather alarmed glance. Tom Riddle was the name they had associated with Quirrell last year, when they concluded that their Defense Professor was evil, possibly dead, and eating unicorns. That was the name they'd seen appear, when Quirrell went off into the forest. And then later, they'd learned that Quirrell had actually been possessed by Voldemort, who was responsible for the unicorns. They hadn't asked the headmaster about it, because that would require admitting that they had the Map, which they suspected would be confiscated if they did. Still, even without confirmation, they were rather sure that Tom Riddle was, in fact, Voldemort's name.

So, to say that seeing the name on the Map again was a bad thing would be an  _enormous_ understatement.

To hear it in the company of an ominous hissing noise? Even worse.

They were still sneaking quietly along the hallway, debating whether they ought to abandon their attempts to be quiet and simply run, when Ginny stepped around the corner. They stopped dead, eyes widening in perfect, shocked sync. She was very pale, and her eyes were bright red, and she had a curiously blank expression on her face. Her arms were hanging oddly limply at her sides, and she was walking with a strange, gliding step. All this would have been alarming on its own; but the most alarming things was that despite it being, quite obviously, their little sister, the Map continued to indicate the name  _Tom Riddle._ So, definitely Ginny, because Polyjuice wouldn't turn someone's eyes that colour, but definitely not Ginny, because the Map doesn't lie. And, well, that look on her face, it wasn't ... right.

Behind her came the dark slithering shadow of something enormous, and terribly frightening.

"Ginny," said Fred, quietly, carefully. "Can you hear me?"

There was a distinct pause. The red eyes flickered, brown for a split second, the colour they were supposed to be. A hissing sound came from the dark shadows around the corner, and Ginny turned her head and snapped something at it, spitting a sharp hissing noise that was grating and high-pitched and horribly unnatural. Then she made a slightly more natural whining noise, as if she were in pain. Another hiss, and then there came a strained, weak voice, as if it were taking all of her willpower to speak. She gasped, " _Basilisk - !_ ", and that was all. Then she clutched at her head, and dropped to her knees, and more angry hissing escaped her.

But that was all they needed to know.

Fred and George had never had a competent Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. But they  _were_ related to Charlie Weasley, who had earned an Outstanding on his Care of Magical Creatures NEWT in his fifth year and not bothered to come back. They knew what  _basilisk_ meant, what it was. They knew that they did not have time to run. The prescribed response to basilisks was a) Apparate away, and if you couldn't do that, the next best thing was to b) get yourself Petrified, if you couldn't kill it on the instant, because otherwise it would chase you down and eat you even if you shut your eyes ...

They pointed their wands at the nearest wall sconce, choosing the same one without bothering to communicate in any normal way, and Transfigured it, metal and wood and flame all together. A moment later, as the great looming presence came hissing towards them, they were staring into the glass of a shiny new silver mirror.

And then they were stone, wands extended, identical grim, frightened expressions on their faces, as the Marauders' Map fluttered to the floor.

* * *

Once Ginny-who-was-not-Ginny was gone again, and Esther the basilisk had slithered back into her resting place, and Tom Riddle had shrieked at his uncooperative host until she cowered, there was no one to watch the dark corridor leading up to the hospital wing. The Transfiguration on the torch would last for hours, and until then, there was no light at all.

Had there been light, and someone to see, they might have observed a fascinating event. They might have observed a fat little grey rat scurry up to the scene and examine it curiously. They might have observed Peter Pettigrew blur very briefly into existence, just long enough to whisper  _Mischief Managed,_ just long enough to pick up an innocuous blank piece of parchment from the floor. They might have observed him fold it up, and pocket it. They might have then observed him go away again, using a power he oughtn't to have, turning into a rat that scuttled back into the darkness unseen. They might have known he had his prize safely tucked away where no one would find it. They might have known that a dead man lived, and the man who killed him ought to be saved.

But no one saw.

* * *

_Dear Tom,_

_I hate you. I should never have believed you when you said it wasn't me killing Hagrid's chickens._

**_And here I was hoping you wouldn't notice until at least February. I suppose I have learned a lesson about trying to make people kill their relatives quite so early in a possession._ **

_I'm going to tell Dumbledore._

**_Ah, no. You will do no such thing._ **

_You think I won't? Sure he'll probably expel me but that's better than somebody_   _dying!_

**_Ha. It may be earlier than I was hoping, but it is too late, dear Ginevra._ **

_What!_

**_You couldn't tell anyone if you tried._ **

_;;- ! - ( ~~_

_**Eloquent.**  
_

_I hate you I hate you I hate you_

_I hate you forever_

**_Until I kill you. Which will be later, rather than sooner, if you do what I ask._ **

_no!_

**_Well, I suppose I will just have to make you, then._ **

_no no no no no no_

**_Shut up._ **

_\- - - !_


	6. Duelling Club

_November 23, 1992_

 

> _[Enclosed: a sketch of the first-floor corridor, flooded, with Mrs. Norris hanging Petrified and the message on the wall]_
> 
> Dear Hermione,
> 
> Thank you for your advice.
> 
> Dean drew a picture for you. Mrs. Norris isn't there anymore, they took her down the day of the attack, but the paint's still there for some reason, I think maybe Filch was afraid to touch it.
> 
> Seamus asked in History of Magic, and apparently the Heir of Slytherin is supposed to be the only person who's able to open the Chamber of Secrets, which in the legend contains a horrible monster that's meant to kill everyone in the school that Salazar Slytherin wouldn't have considered worthy of studying magic. Nobody can think of anything in particular Filch did to a specific person, he's just sort of  _always_ awful to  _everyone_. But last weekend Fred and George got Petrified in the middle of the night, so it's probably somebody that cares about "blood traitors" (that's what the crazy purebloods call us).
> 
> We definitely have Mandrakes, we've been taking care of them in Herbology classes actually.
> 
> I think it's Draco Malfoy, is that stupid?
> 
> Ron Weasley

* * *

_December 4, 1992_

 

> Dear Mr. Weasley,
> 
> Judging by last summer's highly public conflict between your father and Lucius Malfoy, I think you would not be at all remiss in making Draco Malfoy your prime suspect based on the evidence that your brothers were among the first targets. Also, he would fit the "young and inexperienced" bit as well. You do not have any hard evidence, but if there are Mandrakes at Hogwarts, you should only need to wait until your brothers are revived, and they will likely be able to testify as to who attacked them. (Tell them to volunteer for Veritaserum testing - they will be harder to dismiss as biased that way.)
> 
> In the meantime, I encourage you to focus on defending yourself and your classmates. If Draco Malfoy is Petrifying people, he's doing it by  _trying to kill them_ , and that is potentially extremely dangerous for everyone. As an introduction I strongly recommend the  _Staple Spells for Duellists_ series.
> 
> Hermione Granger

* * *

Parvati and Lavender joined the Gryffindor breakfast table, just slightly behind the boys as usual. They both - Lavender more so - managed to look surprisingly put-together, despite having had their morning routine interrupted by Professor McGonagall's announcement about the attack of the night before. "So," began Parvati seriously, "we're doing the duelling club thing - " Seamus and Dean both made frantic quelling gestures as she spoke, but it was too late. Parvati finished her sentence in a confused voice: " - right?" Ron, the subject of her question, didn't even look up from the library book he was reading ( _Staple Spells for Duellists_ ). He was frowning at it with a rather alarming intensity, and did not appear to be paying any attention to what he was eating.

"Of course we are," said the de facto leader of the second-year Gryffindors, chewing on a sausage and absently practicing a complicated-looking gesture with his fork. Everyone in earshot winced, except for his brother Percy, who was sitting a few seats away, next to Oliver. The Quidditch captain, Parvati noticed with some concern, looked like he was stuck halfway between running away as fast as possible and just sort of surrendering to some sort of terrible unknown doom; after a moment's thought, he evidently chose the latter, and his head dropped to the table with a sigh. Lavender gave him a puzzled look, and Alicia (looking long-suffering) patted him on the shoulder and silently offered him a slice of toast.

Meanwhile, the reason for the mass cringing was almost immediately obvious. "Oh, of course," said Percy in an acidic tone. He hadn't looked up from his book, either (the  _Counter-Curse Handbook,_ thirty-ninth edition), but it was obvious he was speaking to Ron. The elder Weasley's voice was practically dripping angry derision, which - coming from someone who took his responsibilities as a prefect so seriously - was distinctive and disconcerting. "Because  _duelling_ will  _absolutely_ help. I'm sure Fred and George would have done  _much_ better against the Heir of Slytherin if they'd known how to  _bow and count to ten!"_

Ron visibly gritted his teeth, as Lavender and Parvati sat down across from him, exchanging uncomfortable glances. "In case you hadn't noticed, Percy, the Heir of Slytherin is probably a  _student._ "

"And your point is what?" Percy's voice ought to have cut through steel. It was even worse than that time he'd threatened to hang them from the rafters by their shoelaces, but Ron did not seem to be wavering at all under the force. "When's the last time a fight in the corridors didn't start with someone getting jinxed from behind? Kids are just as dishonorable as adults, probably  _worse_  - "

"They had their wands out!" snapped Ron. "They  _knew_ they were being attacked, they just didn't know any proper duelling spells, which is why - "

"Or," said Percy, "the Heir of Slytherin is a seventh-year, judging by his ability to cast  _Petrifaction Curses_ , which if you were doing  _sensible_ research you would know are above NEWT-level, and he knows how to  _fight_ , not duel, which is  _not the same thing at all!_ "

"You really, really should not have asked that," Dean said to Parvati in a tired voice, as the two Weasleys started to shout at each other (again).

* * *

Ginny did not participate in the argument.

Her friends might have wondered why she was so quiet, if they hadn't had a ready-made excuse in the form of Fred and George.

And so she screamed, inside her head, and no one noticed.

* * *

At 8 PM sharp, a great many Hogwarts students convened in the Great Hall for Lockhart's Duelling Club. The great wooden House tables had been pushed to the sides, and a raised platform placed in the center of the Hall. On it stood Lockhart, of course, dressed in dramatic purple. Parvati's eyebrows rose as she saw him, and Seamus gave her a funny look. "Don't tell me you're going to go back to insisting he's not an idiot?" he asked worriedly. Those parts of Gryffindor that interacted often with members of the Quidditch team - Lavender and Parvati among them - had all largely gotten over the hero-worship problem when Angelina had had most of her leg temporarily removed.

"No, no," said Parvati absently, still gazing curiously at their Defense professor. "It's just that I'm  _pretty_ sure he's never duelled in competition," which she hoped she might know, as her father was an avid fan of that sort of thing, "and he somehow looks exactly like one of those sort of peacocky show duelists." He really did, from artfully arranged cape to shiny and somewhat impractical shoes. (Not that she was one to talk about the shoes, of course; she was wearing highly impractical sandals which she'd probably need to take off if duelling turned out to require her to move more than a few steps at a time. After all, even if you were doing something physical, you couldn't possibly do anything so gauche as to wear  _trainers_. Honestly, Lavender had no sense at all.)

Neville laughed, somewhat nervously. Seamus said, "Probably thinks it'll make everyone think he's for real." Ron snorted softly in derision. It was the first noise the redhead had made since breakfast, and Parvati was not the only one who jumped slightly at being reminded of his presence. He must have gotten up from the corner he'd been reading in and followed them, but she hadn't actually noticed. Neville and Dean startled, too, and Seamus made a high-pitched sort of yelping noise. It told you something about how much noise Ron usually made, thought Parvati somewhat wryly, that his angry silence was throwing them all off so badly.

Lavender rolled her eyes at Seamus. She hadn't apparently noticed Ron, or possibly hadn't lost track of him at all. "As if we haven't got  _brains,_ " she said irritably. Quite as if it hadn't been only days since the last time she squealed over Lockhart's hair, she announced, "After all, it's not what he  _looks_ like that matters, it's what he  _does_." Seamus and Neville both nodded firmly in encouraging agreement. They'd stopped bothering to point out apparent hypocrisy, and instead taken to showing support whenever she changed her mind in a positive direction. After all, Lavender, for all her flightiness, never said anything she didn't actually - at the time - believe.

"Image is important," disagreed Parvati, "but yes, really, there's a point where - "

"Is that  _Snape_?" said Dean, derailing the conversation as everyone turned to look in surprise.

Indeed, Professor Snape - swathed in forbidding black as usual and looking somewhat annoyed - had stalked onto the stage opposite Lockhart. "Huh," said Parvati, "I would've guessed Flitwick."

"Why?" asked Lavender curiously.

"Well, he used to be a champion duellist," explained Parvati, "my dad's a  _huge_ fan, that's why he was so excited when Padma got Sorted Ravenclaw." Lavender made an  _ohhhh_ sound of comprehension, as they reached the platform and waited for the meeting to begin. Thankfully, the older Gryffindors had largely let the younger ones stand in the front, since they could see right over them. Someone muttered somewhat disgruntledly in the direction of Ron, who was quite tall even at twelve, but Ron ignored the sound completely.

When Snape threw Lockhart across the room with a Disarming Jinx, all the Slytherins and most of the Gryffindors broke into cheers, although most of the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs didn't  _quite_ hate Lockhart enough to have ranked him below Snape the way the Gryffindors had. Snape looked a little startled; Seamus observed, snickering, that he had probably never in his life been applauded by anyone from the House of Gryffindor. After a moment, however, he regained his composure, while Lockhart was getting to his feet spluttering vaguely, and nodded with a smug smirk as the dramatically useless Defense Against the Dark Arts professor suggested they instead have the students pair up.

Lockhart cheerfully paired up the Gryffindor group with various people nearby with whom they generally got along - Neville and Justin, Seamus and Ernie, Dean and Anthony, Lavender and Michael, Parvati and Padma (although Parvati suspected this was because he had, again, forgotten which of them was which; you'd think the convenient House color-coding would be a clue, but noooo) - but Snape got to Ron first, and (grinning) paired him up with Draco Malfoy. Parvati sighed. "What?" said Padma curiously.

"There's no  _way_ at least one of them's not going to the hospital wing," she explained, nodding at Ron and Draco, who were currently exchanging venomous looks. She glanced back at Lockhart, who continued to swan around in an even more dramatic fashion than usual, heading back for the stage now that everyone had been paired up for fighting, looking exactly like he thought he was a champion duellist. Actually, it looked a bit like he was deliberately affecting the same sort of self-assured strut that had been perfected by the Israeli wizard who'd won the most recent International Duelling Championships. "Is it just me, by the way, or does Lockhart  _totally_  look like he's pretending to be Avram Meyer?"

"Oh, definitely, I was thinking that too," said Padma. "Flip a coin to shoot first?" She produced a knut, and tossed it.

"Heads," said Parvati, and pouted when it came down tails.

Up on the stage, Lockhart was exhorting everyone to practice the Disarming Jinx that Snape had demonstrated - " _Only_  to Disarm!" he said loudly - and began to count. "One - two - THREE!"

On three, Padma, as instructed, shouted, " _Expelliarmus!_ ", which markedly failed to have any effect. "Right," she said, making a face, "your turn."

Parvati tried in turn, and although she didn't actually succeed in disarming her twin, she did manage to turn her shirt an interesting shade of blue. "Huh," she said, "I didn't mean to do that."

"I think you mispronounced it?" said Padma dubiously. "This is not very well-organized, I shall have to talk to Professor Flitwick about it - "

Lockhart was, by this point, yelling ineffectually for everyone to stop; to Parvati's complete lack of surprise, the room had descended into chaos almost instantly. Less than a minute after the fighting had started, Snape's voice cut through the din: " _Finite incantatem!_ " he roared, and the chaos departed, leaving quite a bit of debris in its wake. Justin and Neville were on the ground for some reason, Lavender and Michael seemed to have accidentally generated rabbits somehow, Dean and Anthony were all the way across the great Hall near the older Hufflepuffs, and Ernie was apologizing very seriously to a giggling and neon-green Seamus. Ron and Draco ... were still hexing each other. Rather violently, actually; Draco had summoned a snake from somewhere that was doing its best to strangle Ron, and Ron had hit Draco with something nasty that had paralyzed his left arm and was turning him a rather worrying shade of grey.

"Well, at least they're both still conscious," said Parvati dryly, pacing over as Neville pulled himself off the ground. Snape was stalking in their direction, and Neville and Parvati exchanged awkward glances; they weren't totally sure they could stop  _Ron,_ never mind untangle him from Malfoy. Neville turned and looked at Theodore Nott, who was standing a few feet away carefully smoothing down his shirt collar and looking derisively at his housemate.

"Help us stop them before we both lose a billion House points, would you?" Neville said.

Theo blinked a couple of times, and then said, "Right," and leaned in to catch Draco by the shoulders as Neville seized the summoned snake and Parvati wrapped an arm around Ron's elbow and tried to figure out how to trip him without scuffing her shoes.

Some yelling and flailing later, the two combatants had been sufficiently separated and were glaring at each other. Neville and Theo, having achieved this, high-fived, and then awkwardly edged away from each other when everyone in the vicinity gave them odd looks. Snape turned up a moment later to Vanish the snake and frown at everyone. "Ten points from Gryffindor for starting a fight, Weasley," he snapped at Ron, who visibly bit his tongue, looking furious. Draco grinned. "Nott, ten points to Slytherin for rescuing your classmate." There was a pause, and then he - sounding begrudging - added, "and ten to Gryffindor for each of the two of you for helping him." He glared darkly at them as he said it, as if he were personally offended by the fact that they'd managed to solve a problem using inter-House cooperation. While everyone was still absorbing this shock - they were an even ten points up on both sides - he stalked off.

"Huh," said Neville.

"Huh," echoed Theo.

Lavender handed them each a rabbit.

* * *

_December 15, 1992_

> Dear Hermione,
> 
> I've finished reading that book. Do you have any other suggestions?
> 
> Thanks for your help.
> 
> Ron Weasley


	7. Nott Suspicious At All

Hermione was still shocked at how tea with the Notts had gone.

It was three months later and she still wasn't really over it.

* * *

 

Immediately after threatening Theodore, she'd followed him into the house, trying not to look completely bowled over by the ostentatious opulence of the place. He hadn't bothered to shut the door - apparently that was what house-elves were for - and instead stalked into the dining room, wherein Hermione had observed for the first time her ostensible patriarch, Jared Nott. He was, for lack of a better word,  _old._  He'd foregone the traditional Long White Wizardly Beard in favor of shaving his head completely and cutting his snow-white beard closely against the sharp lines of his face, but he could not escape the wrinkles in his skin or the creeping arthritis in his joints. Hermione had had to scramble not to say something incredibly stupid, like, for instance,  _are you sure this is your father and not your grandfather,_  because of course he was Theodore's father. She'd even looked this up: the current head of the House of Nott had had several elder children who'd died in the war, and then his wife had died in childbirth because she'd really been much too old to have another child, even given the robust health of witches and wizards.

Instead she'd curtseyed somewhat awkwardly as Theodore said, quite stiffly, "Father, this is Hermione."

"I see," old Nott had rumbled in a voice like volcanic rock, frowning down at her from where he was looming over the tea table, and then instructed, "Sit." Hermione and Theodore both sat, and Hermione had only barely managed not to look startled as a teacup materialized in front of her. She had suspected almost immediately, and correctly, that she was about to be interrogated. "You are how old, child?"

"Twelve, sir," Hermione had replied.

He'd looked at her like she was a mildly interesting book. She still wasn't sure whether that was supposed to have been a good thing or not. "And you have just completed your  _third_ year at Durmstrang Institute?"

"I tested out of the first two years, sir," she'd explained, trying to figure out how to sound proud without sounding arrogant. Given the average level of arrogance displayed by almost all Durmstrang students, this was one of the things she'd actually been getting  _worse_ at, and she suspected she hadn't done a very good job, but it hadn't seemed to bother old Nott.

He'd nodded, and said again, "I see." Then, "Why have you not informed me of your existence? Karkaroff's letter was the first I heard of you."

Hermione had summarized her carefully constructed lie as clearly as possible. She explained that she was his cousin's granddaughter, that she had been given to Muggles for her safety near the end of the war along with a House Ring (which she was wearing). That those Muggles had (to everyone's surprise, she was sure) actually tried their best to be responsible parents when her actual parents had died, that she'd grown rather fond of them (she made an analogy about pet dogs that made Theodore emit a sort of choked giggling sound). That Headmaster Karkaroff had very kindly lied to the Muggles for her so that she could attend Durmstrang, that she had been so engrossed in her studies (she said something very enthusiastic about Blasting Curses that was almost a direct quote from her roommate Adriana) that she had, to her great dismay, completely neglected to write to her patriarch, which she had been unable to do prior to her enrollment in school owing to the fact that she did not own an owl.

When she stopped talking, after that first barrage of words, there had been a very uncomfortable silence. It had felt like hours, but in retrospect Hermione thought it had probably only been a short few fractions of a minute.

Old Nott had sipped his tea and said, "You may keep your pet Muggles if you tell me how you stole my Ring, little Mudblood."

There was a heavy silence, like the abrupt descending of a thousand tons of dead water.

Indeed, Hermione had felt, in that moment and many of the moments following, like she was drowning. She'd felt like a complete fool, a failure. She'd realized, very suddenly and without any adjustment time, that she was a reckless child who'd jumped in much too far over her head, and she had been positive she was about to die for her stupid audacity. But she had managed to stammer ( _my parents, oh god, Mum and Dad, please don't hurt them_ ), "I, I - Levitation charms, s-sir."

To her great surprise, he had not immediately murdered her. Instead, he'd grinned widely. It somehow made him look simultaneously much friendlier and much more frightening. "Clever," he'd said. "A bit brute-force for my taste, but clever, for your age." Amusement did not suit him; it made him look like a very elderly axe murderer. Hermione vividly remembered the cold shiver that had run through her, and thought it must have been quite visible. He, however, had ignored her discomfort completely, turned to the other person at the table, and asked, "Did she threaten you, Theodore?"

Because  _of course_ he knew who she was. Hermione had later checked, and realized she'd neglected to consider the fact that  _Jared Nott was on the Hogwarts Board of Governors._  Naturally, the fact that a Muggleborn witch named Hermione had been withdrawn from Hogwarts last fall had been on the quarterly report to the Board, and the old wizard had known immediately that he was being lied to. Theodore, obviously having reached the same conclusion and figuring he could now answer truthfully without being set on fire, had nodded. "Immolation Curse," he'd supplied, glancing at Hermione with a look that suggested he was trying not to sound as frightened by the idea as he was. "I don't  _think_ she was making that up, but you could probably check with the Durmstrang Head, she said she did it for exams."

"Ah," nodded the old wizard. "Yes, he mentioned that. Very impressive, child."

Hermione had said, her voice much too high-pitched, "Thank you?"

"If you hurt my son, I will kill you," he had said in a perfectly conversational tone. "Now, you will need to learn to curtsey properly, and we are definitely going to have to do something about the state of your hair, but you will be very useful, I think. Tell me about your professors."

And the rest of the tea, to Hermione's complete and continued shock, had somehow gone perfectly smoothly.

* * *

She'd returned to Durmstrang for the fall semester equipped with new boots (apparently, wearing trainers was Not Allowed), a brooch in the design of the Notts' favorite stylized purple-and-black half-moon (clasping your cloak with an ordinary pin was also Not Allowed), somewhat singed hair (you could, it turned out, force hair to lie flat with sufficiently liberal application of specialized heat charms _,_  and of course, her bushy mane was also Not Allowed), shrunken front teeth (Muggle dentistry was  _definitely_  Not Allowed; she'd have to figure out some way to conceal that or her parents would be very upset) several books on proper pureblood manners that she was expected to have memorized by Christmas break, a list of threats she'd been required to memorize which enumerated what would be done to her biological parents if she failed to uphold the dignity of the family name she had been allowed to use, and a firmly renewed sense of terrified purpose.

Right now she was useful; there were many practical advantages to being able to claim a prodigiously talented young Durmstrang student as part of your House, after all. But she was holding no illusions that old Nott would not murder her out of hand the second she became more inconvenient than useful; there were too many ways for an ancient and wealthy house to make people vanish. Therefore she needed to continue being useful for as long as she was not capable of defeating the old wizard in a fight. It was a frighteningly high bar to hit, but what else could she do?

Viktor had asked her curiously, as they sat down for the start of term feast (less absurd than Hogwarts', but pleasant all the same), whether she was alright, because she looked rather out of sorts. She'd temporized awkwardly, "I had a ... sort of stressful time with my relatives," and thankfully this had been accepted sympathetically by all and the subject had drifted away. Instead she had listened with quiet interest and tried to absorb her friends' cheer. Viktor talked enthusiastically about his summer at the Bulgarian national training grounds; Jarek and Natasha argued about the odds of their respective favorite professional duellists doing well this season; Adriana made affectionate fun of Viktor for enjoying spending his time being yelled at by Boris Vulchanov; and no one tried to force her to do anything other than listen. They were all used to her tendency to be very quiet until she had something to talk at length about.

Although the return to classes and friends had calmed her down, it had taken her the entire fall term and an absurd amount of studying-as-catharsis before she'd really been able to approach the thought of her return to Britain with anything other than panic. She was being required to spend a week of her break at the Nott Estate (which, she had noticed, did not actually have an  _address,_  because that would imply anyone didn't already know where it was.  _Purebloods_ , honestly) and had been avoiding thinking about it all term. As far as she could tell, this would consist of about half "being introduced around to other obnoxious British wizarding upper class children" and about half "being subtly or not-so-subtly threatened", plus or minus arguing with her hair and having extremely awkward half-interactions with Theodore. He was still somewhat terrified of her, but, to be fair, she  _had_ threatened to violently murder him and so she couldn't really blame him. At least she hadn't had to think of an excuse to give her parents, since they were in Italy for the holiday break and did not expect her home until the summer.

(It had also taken her almost the entire fall term - and a lot of somewhat amused advice from her roommates - before she'd been consistently able, with time, magic, magical hair product,  _and_ magical hair dye, to force her hair to at least vaguely resemble Theodore's. It was still curlier than it ought to be, but black, and could be controlled with careful braiding. But she was going to have to do it, at the very least during the time she was in Britain, or she'd be outed and probably murdered the second she got within a hundred yards of Draco Malfoy.)

She'd been owl-posted a timed Portkey, which was not the slightest bit strange at Durmstrang, and also a Slytherin scarf, which had gotten her a few odd looks. The letter accompanying the scarf (which she'd stared at and not put on) informed her that it had been her grandfather's. The subtext was that she was to avoid wearing anything red or gold, because the students who'd known her during her very brief Hogwarts education would be more likely to recognize her if she was wearing Gryffindor colours. It shouldn't have bothered her, turning her back on the Sorting that had brought her only grief. It was Gryffindor tactlessness and Gryffindor stupidity that had gotten her expelled from Hogwarts, of course, Gryffindor audacity that had landed her in the precarious position she now occupied.

And yet it was Gryffindor bravery that had saved her life.

Hermione Nott could not wear red; but Hermione Granger was not going to wear green.

She left Durmstrang for the winter break wearing a black scarf, and with her head held high.


	8. Snowstorm

The day of the blizzard was very eventful.

It rattled against the windows, piled up against the walls, and made beautiful patterns against the ceiling of the Great Hall. Some of the more adventurous students (and a few that were less adventurous but happened to know how to get Impervius Charms to stick to clothing) even went outside, to build forts and have dramatic pitched battles. The six NEWT Astronomy students commandeered a large fraction of the Ravenclaw table to set up telescopes and make complicated weather charts and talk very excitedly about omens and centaur prophecies with Professor Sinistra. And of course, Herbology classes for the last day of term had been cancelled. Neville - and really only Neville - pouted all morning; he only cheered up when Professor Sprout - looking quite amused - invited him to tea and gave him the lecture notes for the day.

And that was only before lunchtime.

* * *

"D'you know Loony Lovegood's been sleeping in the library?" said Jimmy Peakes as he caught up to Ginny and Demelza. Colin, as usual, was off somewhere taking pictures of things; Ginny had been mostly silent ever since Fred and George had been attacked, and Demelza didn't have the force of personality on her own to keep Colin from wandering off.

Demelza stared at her classmate. Sleeping in the library? She could guess what for - Luna had the typically Ravenclaw tendency to obsessively research things, except that she kept researching things that were  _crazy_  - but surely that was against the curfew rules? She began, shocked, "How on Earth is she getting away with th - " and was interrupted.

"Her name is not  _Loony!_ " snapped Ginny angrily. "She's - "

( _\- right_ , was the rest of the sentence, but she was not allowed to finish it. After a moment her truncated sentence was disregarded, and the topic went away again, to winter break plans and Quidditch games, and Ginny, seething unseen, went back to suffering in silence.)

* * *

Draco Malfoy, too dignified for snowball fights, wandered over to the library.

As he walked by, Ron Weasley got up from his study table very suddenly, startling everyone around him, and accused Malfoy, quite loudly, of being the Heir of Slytherin. A great many heads turned to look; people did not ordinarily speak above a whisper in the library. Everyone was curious, too; ever since the previous day's duelling club, during which Draco had notably summoned a  _snake_ at Ron, there had been a lot of rumours that this was precisely the case. "And you're not even being subtle or anything, you stupid little prat," Ron continued, sounding stressed and very angry, "I mean, really, summoning snakes at me, you'd think you were  _trying_ to get caught. Wanted the recognition too badly, huh?"

"I am flattered that you think I am the most Slytherin person in the building," said Draco in response, grinning widely, "but you can't pin anything on me, Weasley."

There was a pause, as whispers spread through the bystanders. That hadn't exactly been a  _denial_. Many of the Slytherins in the vicinity were rolling their eyes - this was a stock response that indicated Draco wanted to pretend he knew more about the situation than he actually did - but almost everyone else was taking this as almost confirmation, given all the apparent evidence available to them. After all, the Malfoys loved to brag about their blood status, and it wouldn't be weird at all if they could claim descent from Slytherin somewhere in the line. Or for that matter maybe the Blacks could, and Draco Malfoy's mother had been a Black. Plus, there had been that highly-public conflict between Lord Malfoy and the Weasley patriarch last summer, and it was the  _Weasley twins_ that had been attacked ...

"I  _know_ it's you," snarled Ron, "how long did it take your dad to teach you that spell, huh? Had to practice first on Mrs. Norris, because you're too incompetent to - "

Draco drew his wand.

Ron laughed, delighted. "I  _dare_  you," he said. "Try to kill me right here in the middle of the library with dozens of people watching, get sent to Azkaban, it'll be  _worth it_ if you win, right?" He made a 'bring it on' gesture, opening his arms wide. "Come on, don't be a coward."

"Coward is just what  _Gryffindors_  say to excuse their total lack of common sense," snapped Draco. " _Tarantallegra!_ "

Ron, snickering, ducked and drew his wand. He completely ignored the table behind him, which had had to be counterspelled by its alarmed Hufflepuff occupants when it attempted to start dancing. So that hadn't been a murder attempt, Ron was thinking, but he could do a duel again, too, if Malfoy wanted, that was fine, he would never turn down an excuse for a fight. Besides, he'd been practicing. He began, " _Exp -_  "

"NO DUELLING IN THE LIBRARY!" interrupted the strident voice of Madam Pince, who had just arrived on the scene and looked deeply offended by all this noise. Several people giggled and then quickly stifled the sound as the librarian turned her glare on them, and Ron and Draco rather hurriedly both pocketed their wands. They tried to look innocent, and were dramatically unsuccessful.

"Um - sorry - " began Ron awkwardly.

Draco, at the same time, tried, "We just - "

"OUT! BOTH OF YOU!"

They went.

The other Gryffindors exchanged glances and sighs. Neville tapped his palm for rock/parchment/wand; he and Lavender threw rock, Parvati and Dean picked wands, and Seamus, the odd one out with parchment, made a face and got up to chase Ron.  _Someone_ would have to drag him in a direction that was different from the direction that Malfoy was going, and in any case they'd agreed on a general policy of not going around alone ever since the twins had been Petrified. The third-year Hufflepuffs with the recently-jinxed table gave the group odd looks as the remaining four of them resumed their studying with barely a hitch, having exchanged zero words.

Seamus returned with Ron about ten minutes later; they both looked somewhat annoyed.

"Draco Malfoy," said Seamus, shaking his head, "is, without question, the most annoying person I have  _ever met_." Ron clearly had the same opinion, but he was expressing it by flopping into a chair and glaring at a bookshelf, which glared back rather stubbornly.

"Did you jinx him?" asked Lavender.

"No," grumbled Seamus, who had really wanted to. "We exerted  _self-control,_ " he said the word like he was disgusted by it, "and came back here so we wouldn't murder him and get arrested for vigilante-ing."

Dean, who had been trying to convince his classmates to stop resorting to violence at the drop of a hat, beamed and said cheerfully, "You win a cookie!", and handed him a sketch of a cartoon mouse with a clover pendant eating a cookie. Lavender, who had earned one of these drawings yesterday for not participating in Parvati and Neville's "wrestling Ron to the ground" approach to solving the problems that had arisen at the duelling club, applauded quietly. Seamus made a face at Dean, but he folded up the sketch neatly and put in in his pocket all the same.

* * *

Elsewhere, Percy Weasley concluded an extended rant about the stupidity of the Hogwarts student body. He was very upset that even Ron, who had been getting much better about being sensible the previous year, was buying into the idea that Draco Malfoy was the Heir of Slytherin. Sure, he was a Malfoy and half a Black, and he was an obnoxious little snot, and he was often heard to express blood purist views, and his father had had a very public disagreement with the second victims' father, but ... "Draco Malfoy," said Percy, grinding his teeth, "is  _twelve years old_."

Penelope burst out, annoyed, "At least that  _sort of_  makes sense!"

"Compared to what?" asked Percy, raising an eyebrow.

"I've got a first-year - they all call her  _Loony,_ that should tell you something - who thinks she knows where the  _Chamber of Secrets_  is." Penelope rolled her eyes. Luna had stopped trying to tell her that the Ministry of Magic was secretly run by saber-toothed squirrels and started trying to tell her that the Chamber of Secrets was a real place. Percy, who was firmly of the opinion that there was no Heir of Slytherin and it was just some Slytherin upperclassman being horrible, laughed darkly.

" ... Yeah, okay, you win that one," he said.

* * *

The second-year Gryffindors left a little bit early for dinner, still feeling Madam Pince glaring at them through several aisles of bookshelves (or possibly that was the staring-contest one, you could never really be sure). Ernie and Susan of Hufflepuff, who had been lurking around for some reason, followed them out the door. "Hey, what were you guys doing?" asked Seamus curiously when he noticed them. "Usually you study in your common room, don't you?"

"Yeah," said Ernie, looking a little awkward. "We were, um ... "

" ... following Malfoy," supplied Susan, who had evidently realized that Ernie didn't want to admit aloud to having been doing anything resembling skulking. "You know, to ... see if he does anything suspicious." But it would have been too obvious to go after him right when he and Ron had left, so they'd hung around awkwardly until all the Gryffindors left, and now they weren't really sure how to continue their quest to prove that Malfoy was attacking people, and had decided to give up and go to dinner with the others.

"Ah. Yeah, that makes sense," said Seamus agreeably, and everyone else nodded, and down the halls they went.

Consequently, the seven of them were the first to find Draco Malfoy standing in the middle of the second-floor corridor, wand pointed at a Petrified Justin Finch-Fletchley. Both students were shadowed by the frozen, soot-coloured, eerily still floating shape of Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington.

"HA! CAUGHT IN THE ACT!" yelled Ernie dramatically.

Draco didn't move.

" ... Um," said Ernie. He glanced at Susan. She shrugged helplessly.

Ron and Neville stepped carefully around the side of the hallway, wands drawn. "He's Petrified too," reported Neville after a moment, since Ron was too busy looking shocked, "and ... so's Sir Nicholas, I think?"

"I didn't know you could Petrify ghosts," said Parvati.

"I was pretty sure you couldn't?" said Susan, frowning.

"I hope he's okay," said Neville dubiously, poking at the ghost. "I'm not sure how anyone would feed him Mandrake Draught, if he  _is_ Petrified."

"Seamus, Parvati, go get McGonagall," said Ron, still looking shocked but capable of making decisions. They nodded and headed down the stairs towards the Transfiguration room, quickly but not at a run. You had to be about fourth-year before you could  _run_  down Hogwarts' staircases without seriously injuring yourself. Ron continued, turning to the Hufflepuffs, "Macmillan, Bones, do you know what Finch-Fletchley was doing up here by himself?"

"I dunno, we told him to stay in the common room with Hannah," said Susan, looking troubled. "We were going to go get them before dinner. I mean, being pureblood obviously isn't a perfect protection," she glanced apologetically at Ron, "but in  _theory_ the primary target is Muggleborns, so we figured, better safe than sorry, you know? And ... apparently not." She sighed. "Sorry, Weasley, I've got nothing."

"We should check on Hannah," suggested Ernie, frowning uneasily.

"You should," agreed Ron. He glanced at Lavender and Dean, both Muggle-born, as Ernie and Susan hurried off with anxious expressions. "And you should probably get to dinner quickly, Lavender, Dean, same reason. Don't take any secret passages, those'll be easy for the attacker to hide in, just go straight to the Great Hall down the grand staircase." Looking a little nervous, they both nodded, and left in the opposite direction from the Hufflepuffs at a nervous sort of jog; and then Ron and Neville were alone with the new Petrified victims. "Alright," said Ron, "this is bloody ridiculous, how did  _Malfoy_  get Petrified?"

"It could be a trick, I guess?" said Neville doubtfully. "I mean, to stop people suspecting him."

Ron frowned. While it was, as a general rule, good to assume the Malfoys were lying unless otherwise noted, Petrifying himself along with a Hufflepuff and a Gryffindor ghost didn't really seem like Malfoy's style. Also, that would presume that Malfoy was capable of Petrifying people on  _purpose_ , which frankly Ron had been assuming was not the case. "I think it's more likely," he said, "that if it  _is_ Malfoy, he didn't do this on purpose. Remember I told you how Hermione said Petrification happens when you screw up trying to kill people?"

"Oh, yeah," said Neville, who did remember that. "So you figure Malfoy tried to attack Finch-Fletchley, messed it up, got himself too?"

Nodding, Ron added, "I'm not sure how Sir Nicholas fits into that, though, I really didn't think you could Petrify a ghost even by accident ... "

"You can't," said Professor McGonagall. Ron and Neville both jumped about a foot and Ron narrowly prevented himself from pointing his wand at the Transfiguration professor, who had just arrived on the scene with a grim expression. Dean and Parvati came up behind her a moment later, panting, and looking somewhat impressed; McGonagall wasn't even winded. She raised her eyebrows at Ron.

"Sorry, professor," he said sheepishly. "So what's happened to Sir Nicholas, then, do you know?"

"I do not know, Mr. Weasley," said Professor McGonagall somewhat unhappily. "But I suspect that it means we must now assume that this is not merely the work of someone who wishes to appear more impressive by citing the name of Salazar." She Conjured a pair of floating stretchers, and frowned thoughtfully at Sir Nicholas. She wasn't even really looking at Ron, and Neville would later suspect that she'd briefly forgotten who she was talking to. "I think we must presume that the Chamber of Secrets has indeed been opened again." She'd Conjured a great white paper fan to move Sir Nicholas, and then paused, and frowned at the two Gryffindor boys, as if suddenly noticing they were still there. At once the Transfiguration professor gave them a severe look and said, "Go to dinner."

* * *

"Again?" said Ron frustratedly as he and Neville paced down the steps, wands in hand and trying to pay attention to their surroundings. Seamus and Parvati were trailing them, still out of breath. "What did she mean,  _again_? This has happened  _before_?"

"If it's a power you get by being descended from Salazar Slytherin it would make sense that someone else has had it before now," said Neville reasonably. "I mean, you know, since Slytherin's great-great-great-whatever-grandson has a grandfather who was also descended from Slytherin and probably also went to Hogwarts." They clattered down the steps to the first floor, and put away their wands only as they went through the doors to the Great Hall. Dean and Lavender, safely at the Gryffindor table, waved at them. Neville continued, "Only then you'd expect it to happen about once a generation, right? So why isn't that what's happening?"

"Right," said Ron, frowning, "so either they're  _hiding_ it or they haven't all gone to Hogwarts." They sat down at the table; Parvati helpfully filled in Lavender and Dean on the subject under discussion.

"Is that common, families not all going to the same school?" asked Lavender curiously.

"Not really, no," said Neville. "I mean, not among pureblood families, at least, and at this point I think we can safely assume that's what we're talking about."

"So, assuming it's not Malfoy - " began Seamus.

"Of course it's not Malfoy," said Percy irritably as he walked by. Ron shot him a glare, which he ignored.

Seamus continued, sighing, " - assuming it's not Malfoy, we need somebody whose family hasn't gone to Hogwarts since the last time this happened, right? So when was that?"

"I think it'd have to have been sort of recently," said Parvati, "I mean, we couldn't find any records of this happening before, so Professor McGonagall would only know if she remembered it, wouldn't she?"

"That," said Ron, "is a really good point, does anyone know how old McGonagall is?"

" ... about the same age as my Gran?" hazarded Neville, who was vaguely aware that his grandmother and his Transfiguration professor were slightly-antagonistic friends.

"In which case our new plan should  _definitely_  be for you to write to your Gran," said Ron immediately, "and ask her about it."

Neville nodded. "No promises," he said, "but I'll ask."

* * *

Rubeus Hagrid did not appear at the Christmas feast.

Neither did Headmaster Dumbledore.


	9. Self-Preservation

It seemed like Dumbledore's absence should have made the school grind to a halt.

Lucius Malfoy and the Board of Governors had removed the headmaster from his position shortly after the news got out that Draco Malfoy had been Petrified, and at the same time Rubeus Hagrid had been arrested and taken to Azkaban. A fight had broken out at breakfast the day following. Various Gryffindors, of course, insisted with varying levels of loudness that Hagrid was obviously innocent. Then, various Slytherins insulted them and/or insulted Hagrid. Then Anthony Goldstein gave an extended lecture about probability mass and priors, and how you never wanted to be  _not paranoid enough_. Then half the Hufflepuff table started yelling about the unfairness of making any decisions without real proof, and most of Ravenclaw got up in arms in Anthony's defense about the difference between  _most likely_  and  _100% sure._ Then Theodore Nott rolled his eyes at everyone and said that his father and Lord Malfoy probably  _were_ 100% sure or they wouldn't have gotten rid of Dumbledore; and the mention of Dumbledore had set off the rest of Gryffindor, at which point the entire Great Hall had dissolved into bad jinxes and flying food.

But McGonagall and Snape yelled at everyone, and when that didn't work they started casting paralysis hexes, and everyone went to class.

The school, somehow, did not come to any sort of halt, grinding or otherwise.

Neville Longbottom wrote a letter to his grandmother. OWL students studied for their looming exams. Luna Lovegood was caught in the library after hours and assigned a truly ridiculous amount of detention. Ron and Percy Weasley stopped talking to each other, which was widely considered an improvement upon the periodic yelling which had previously been taking place. Colin Creevey blew up his cauldron trying to develop too many pictures of Professor Lockhart and lost a rather staggering number of House points when he showed up for Potions class without one. Daphne Greengrass missed a week of classes and refused to tell anyone why, even her cousin Blaise, and Padma Patil who occasionally had civil conversations with Pansy Parkinson told her twin sister that some of the Slytherins thought Daphne had had a nervous breakdown about the upcoming second-year exams, which hadn't happened to anyone outside of Ravenclaw in  _years._ Ginny Weasley broke the first-year obstacle course record, beating the previous record-holder (her brother Charlie) by almost thirty seconds.

And classes went on.

* * *

_January 1, 1993_

> Dear Mr. Weasley,
> 
> For reasons I cannot safely explain, I cannot further discuss with you the problem of the Heir of Slytherin. Please do not inquire.
> 
> I highly recommend the entire  _Staple Spells_  series. If you're interested in defense in particular,  _Fundamentals of Abjuration_  by Elminster Gygax is a particularly good place to start; I've got complete enough notes from my copy that I don't need it, so you can borrow it if Hogwarts hasn't got one.
> 
> Hermione Granger
> 
> p.s. if you can find and send me a Gryffindor scarf, I will consider the wrong you did me to have been repaid.

* * *

_January 12, 1993_

 

> _[enclosed: a red-and-gold striped scarf, and Apparition coordinates for the Burrow]_
> 
> Dear Hermione,
> 
> I'm not going to ask who's threatening you, because that would be stupid, but ... my Mum won't turn you away, if you need help.
> 
> I also won't ask you to comment, but in case you need to know: Draco Malfoy, Justin Finch-Fletchley, and Nearly Headless Nick got Petrified. Hagrid's been arrested and Dumbledore's gone.
> 
> I would like to borrow that book, I can't find it in the library.
> 
> Ron Weasley

* * *

_January 23, 1993_

> _[enclosed: a well-worn copy of Elminster Gygax's_ Fundamentals of Abjuration _, fourth edition]_
> 
> Dear Ron,
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Hermione Granger

* * *

One day early in February, Ron Weasley paused after Transfiguration class, lagging to pause by Professor McGonagall's desk. The rest of the second-year Gryffindors exchanged glances and threw hand gestures, then four of them left with the Hufflepuffs, leaving Parvati Patil (the odd one out this time, one parchment to two wands and two stones) leaning on the door frame with a faintly curious expression. The Transfiguration professor said, bemused, "What was that, Miss Patil?"

"Odd one out has to babysit Ron," said Parvati, smiling in a way that indicated this was the sort of duty you performed for people because you cared about their well-being, not because you  _had_  to. She explained, "He's not actually talking to any of us, because apparently he is too serious for talking," she rolled her eyes pointedly, "but we have to make sure he, you know, eats and goes to class and so on, instead of just spending every waking hour reading spellbooks."

"I see," said Professor McGonagall, blinking. She turned her gaze on the redheaded boy standing in front of her desk. "What can I do for you, Mr. Weasley?"

* * *

_February 11, 1993_

> Dear Neville,
> 
> I assume the incident to which you refer, which occurred during my final year at Hogwarts and when Minerva was Head Girl, was the death of Miss Myrtle Warren. At the time the death was pinned on Rubeus Hagrid, but I assure you this is blatant falsehood. That boy was no more competent at thirteen than he is now; I don't think he could have murdered a mouse, much less a classmate. Rumours, naturally, abound, particularly among Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs, that the girl's death was the work of the so-called Slytherin's Monster, but if any of my classmates had been so fortunate as to possess the ability to summon such a creature, I do not believe any of them would have been able to keep the information to themselves. We, at any rate, concluded at the time that Headmaster Dippet wanted an excuse to expel Hagrid, and picked a not-terribly-popular student against whom to fabricate evidence of assault so that he could at the same time be used as a scapegoat. It was terribly suspicious, you understand, that Miss Warren should have died rather than been Petrified like the others, and Alphard Black (quite rightly, I think) suggested that this was probably not the intended result. Armando Dippet was exactly the sort of buffoon who would accidentally kill a student in the middle of trying to be as clever as his predecessor.
> 
> It would have been impolite at the time to discuss seriously who was actually Petrifying people - for reasons I have explained to you before, the phrase "Were you the one who ..." is verboten in Slytherin House - but if I had to, I would have guessed Abraxas Malfoy and Arcturus Black. Now that this has begun again, I am suspicious indeed. No, Neville, I did not know that this was happening, or I would have done something a good deal sooner - Hogwarts has always been a rather insular place, and since the incident with your Muggleborn friend, that can only have become more true. I am sure I would have received a letter if you had been hospitalised, but not before; so I must commend you for having the unexpected sense to write me yourself.
> 
> I will investigate this further; Abraxas and Arcturus are not available to be questioned, but I would not be surprised to find that they had set some curse to trigger upon the event of their deaths. In the meantime, do not neglect your studies; I should be terribly disappointed not to see again the horror your first-year exam results produced in Algernon. You wouldn't want to disappoint your grandmother, would you, Neville?
> 
> A. M. Longbottom

* * *

Ron and Parvati are half an hour late to lunch, where they find Neville petting an imperious and slightly lethal-looking Great Horned Owl with feathers precisely the shade of his hair, staring somewhat bemusedly at a piece of parchment in his hand.

"Guys," says Parvati, not waiting until she's sat down next to Lavender to start talking excitedly, "Ron convinced McGonagall to let us - "

Seamus interrupted her. "Did you know Neville's gran was a  _Slytherin_?"

"Um, yes," said Parvati, blinking, "she wears green, like,  _all the time_. Now as I was saying - "

"Did you know Moaning Myrtle was a student? Like,  _recently_?" said Lavender.

"I mean, I guess I figured she can't've been  _that_  old or she'd sound all old-fashioned like Sir Nicholas," said Parvati, confused. "Why?"

"She's the one that died fifty years ago, like when McGonagall said this happened  _before_ _-_  " began Lavender excitedly.

" - and even she  _totally_  thinks it was Malfoy," Seamus said, "or, like, his granddad - "

"They tried to blame  _Hagrid_ ," said Neville, still staring at the parchment, looking horrified. "That's why he's not allowed to do magic."

"Okay, alright, that's fascinating," said Parvati, "but you guys - "

"If the Petrification  _is_ what's supposed to happen it can't be Malfoy, though, right?" said Dean. "Unless he did it to himself on purpose, I guess."

"Not if it wasn't actually  _him_ , I mean, if it was his dad or his granddad or whoever like Neville's gran says," pointed out Seamus.

Lavender added, in tones of great excitement, " _And_ that makes sense because like - " she glanced down the table at Percy Weasley, engrossed in a book - "like  _some people_ said, our Malfoy is too young, it makes way more sense if it's one of his older relatives."

"Guys," said Parvati, sighing.

"What about," Dean said, glancing consideringly at the Slytherin table, "Nott? He's real quiet, he doesn't take orders from Malfoy, and remember when we were talking about how it had to be somebody where their whole family didn't go to Hogwarts? I heard one of them mention before Potions last week that he's got a cousin who goes to Durmstrang."

"I think we should wait to draw conclusions until my Gran investigates," said Neville, folding up the letter and putting it carefully in his pocket.

" _Guys_ ," said Parvati.

"What?" said Lavender.

"Ron convinced McGonagall to let us use her classroom for duelling practice!"

" _What_?"

* * *

Every Thursday evening, without fail, the second-year Gryffindors met in the Transfiguration classroom, instead of the library. Sometimes a spectacled cat lurked and watched with interest as they stumbled their way through jinxes and low-level shields. All three Weasleys were quiet and grim lately, weighed down by the absence of the twins, but here Ron Weasley came alive again.

It was a little bit alarming, that these children - they were twelve, a few of them thirteen - felt they needed to know how to fight.

But it also made Minerva McGonagall terribly proud of her students.

* * *

"Hey, Weasley!"

Ginny made a high-pitched yelping noise and immediately hated herself for it; she turned towards the unfamiliar voice, wincing, as Demelza and Colin gave her curious looks. Inspection yielded the strange information that the person speaking was the imperious blonde Slytherin second-year who'd been apparently nonexistent all of last week. The girl whose father Definitely Had Not modified the memories of the entire student body a few years ago, who apparently hadn't even told Blaise Zabini - her  _cousin_  - what had incapacitated her in such a way that she hadn't even been in the hospital wing. There were rumours she'd been at St. Mungo's, or at home. There were really outlandish rumours that she'd been on the Moon, and only slightly less outlandish rumours that she'd been in Azkaban. Her return had, at least, quashed most of the rumours that she was the Heir of Slytherin.

She had a familiar black book in her left hand, and Ginny suddenly had a horrible sinking feeling that she knew exactly what had happened to Daphne Greengrass.

"What?" she managed, her throat as dry as if she'd swallowed a torch.

"Found your diary. Thought you might want it back," said Daphne, and Ginny registered vaguely, in the back of her mind, that the tone was slightly too even, slightly too practiced, slightly too forced. She would remember, much later, and feel guilty for hating the girl who couldn't have stopped herself holding out the book any more than Ginny could have stopped herself reaching out to take it.

At the time, the only thing she could feel was terror.

But she smiled, and said, "Thank you," and put the diary in her bookbag, and turned and walked away.

_What do you want,_

_**Oh, sweet Ginevra, your idiocy always astounds me. What do you think I want?**  
_

_I **w** a **n** t yo **u** r bro **thers.**_

* * *

_February 9, 1993_

> Dear Hermione,
> 
> Don't ask why, but do you have any way of checking if there's any British pureblood families that haven't gone to Hogwarts in a couple of decades?
> 
> We can't find any decent genealogies in our library, Neville says he thinks they got banned or sent to the Restricted Section around when Dumbledore took over. So teachers couldn't discriminate between their pureblood and non-pureblood students, which is a great goal and everything but it's really not helping us right now.
> 
> Hope you had a nice winter holiday.
> 
> Ron Weasley

* * *

On Valentines' Day of 1993, Hogwarts was covered in pink paper hearts and irritated dwarf-cupids.

This was not enjoyed by any of the authority figures, other than the dubiously-authoritative Professor Lockhart. Headmaster Dumbledore, after all, was not there to look politely amused and encourage his teachers to play along. (He, in addition to technically not being allowed on the grounds, was busy trying to prevent anyone  _other_  than Lucius Malfoy from finding out that things were getting a little bit out of hand at Hogwarts. Lucius Malfoy had a somewhat terrifying ability to know what was going on in places he had no right knowing anything about, but Molly Weasley had been told Fred and George had an accident practicing Charms, and no one had any intention of telling the Finch-Fletchleys anything at all.)

Professor Snape deducted House points from no fewer than a dozen students who were stupid enough to offer him valentines, many of whom were actually in his own House. He also devoted one-third of every single one of his classes to giving a very acerbic lecture about love potions and how, contrary to Professor Lockhart's idiotic suggestion, they were  _not_ acceptable ways of earning affection. He would  _not_ teach anyone how to make them, students were  _not_ permitted to use them, and he would  _personally hospitalize_ anyone who was so unbelievably stupid as to try.

Professor McGonagall hexed at least thirty dwarves who were trying to deliver the bloody things in her classroom, and all her afternoon classes had to awkwardly congregate outside her door as she one-by-one let them through the shields she'd erected to keep out the weirdly determined letter-delivery system.

Professor Burbage had most of her classes derailed by overwrought Shakespeare.

Professor Sprout had to dedicate most of her afternoon classes to cleaning paper out of the Mandrake pots, and although no one could actually hear anything she was saying through the Necessarily Fluffy Safety Earmuffs, most of her students somewhat suspected there was profanity taking place.

Professor Sinistra was observed to show up for lunch (she usually slept through breakfast), look around in confusion and terror, and promptly turn around and go back out the doors; Professor Vector was noted to miss several of her afternoon classes and was later found sitting in the Astronomy Tower trying to convinced the apparently dwarf-phobic Astronomy Professor to open her well-barred door and eat something ("I am not coming out until those  _monstrosities_ are gone!").

Professor Flitwick's infinite patience eroded slowly over the course of the day, which mostly looked like his voice getting progressively higher-pitched and the other professors edging subtly away from him. At dinnertime he was to be found sitting at the Ravenclaw House table rather than the faculty table, glowing a rather unhealthy shade of blue and very calmly eating potatoes. A few of his prefects were sustaining a fairly powerful Silencing Sphere to a radius of about six feet from their Head of House on all sides, and giving anyone who showed signs of approaching him very sharp looks.

Professor Kettleburn tried to feed a pair of Cupids to an enormous salamander and would have lit his classroom on fire, except that his classroom had been fireproofed some number of years ago after the Fire Crab Incident.

Professor Babbling had failed to warn his students of the dangers of writing love letters in runes, and suffered a number of explosions in his classroom which was actually, for the first time in years, larger than the number in Kettleburn's.

The wizard having the  _worst_  Valentines' Day, however, was not any of the Professors of Hogwarts, nor any of its students.

* * *

Around noon on Valentines' Day of 1993, Lucius Malfoy walked into the library at Malfoy Manor, intending to look for historical references to Slytherin's Monster, and was totally distracted from that problem when he discovered it was occupied. Rather than empty tables and carefully organized shelves, the library was currently occupied by a bald wizard with severe black robes and a close-cropped white beard, a green-robed witch with white curls and tiny spectacles, and a disordered pile of what looked like every curse-breaking book the Malfoys owned. Two black cloaks were hung up neatly by the door, one with a purple half-moon pin and the other underneath a ridiculous feathered hat.

"You blithering idiot," Augusta Longbottom was saying, "there's no  _circle_  if it's anchored on a person, nothing to disrupt. Give me that."

"Hidebound old bitch," retorted Jared Nott, shoving the indicated text across the cluttered table. "I can make a circle."

Okay. So Augusta Longbottom and Jared Nott were in his library arguing about something. That was new and unexpected. Lucius had several separate reasons to be alarmed by this. First of all, the fact that Old Nott was his uncle did not actually prevent him from being terrifying, and when he was eight years old he'd watched Madam Longbottom win an exhibition duel against  _Alastor Moody,_  albeit narrowly. Second, he hadn't seen Nott since his father died, and he'd actually gone to a special effort to  _specifically_  defend the Manor against  _Jared Nott in particular_ , because the man had never liked him; and here he was anyway. Third, Lucius hadn't actually exchanged more than a handful of barely-civil words with Augusta Longbottom nee Fawcett since before the start of the War, and he was pretty sure Nott hadn't either.

And did people not think it was polite to  _ask_?

"Oh, yes, break a curse by casting another one you'll also have to break,  _that's_  the efficient way to do things. Of course. Obviously," said Augusta, scribbling something on a piece of parchment and picking up a different book. It looked like they were simply working  _near_ one another, not actually working on the same project; their primary interaction aside from insulting each other, Lucius suspected, was stealing each others' reference books.

" _You_ apparently don't even know what kind of curse you're trying to break," growled Jared, "so kindly keep your sarcasm to yourself."

"You  _do_  know what you're breaking," said Augusta cheerfully, "and I'm still making more progress than you."

"I hate you," said Jared, quite conversationally.

Lucius noticed that he was staring blankly at them, and that they were ignoring him utterly. He reminded himself sharply that although these were his father's contemporaries, he was  _Lord Malfoy_ and they were in  _his house._  And besides that, he had work to do, he needed to find out what had gone wrong with that book ... his father had told him that if ten years went by without the Dark Lord returning, he was to give it to someone young, impressionable, and disposable, and, quote, the  _Mudbloods would be purged as they so greatly deserve_ , unquote, and that was ... evidently  _not_ what was happening at Hogwarts. The annoyance of dealing with this new problem on top of the previous one, after a moment's contemplation, supplied him the required aggression, and he said in what he hoped was a passably imperious tone, "What  _exactly_  is going on here?"

They both looked up.

"None of your business," said Augusta calmly.

None of his - !

"You are in  _my library_ ," said Lucius.

"This is Brax's library," corrected Jared in tones of polite dismissal. "It's yours when you can defend it, and not before."

"Ex _cuse_ m - "

Equally calmly, and with no change of expression, Jared said, "Out, or I'll hex you."

That he couldn't just let go by. Not in his house, or he'd lose all credibility. You couldn't just let people order you around in your own house when you were a Lord of the Wizengamot, not even people much older than you who quite possibly had more money than you did. So Lucius drew his wand from his cane. Or, he tried to, at any rate; before he could even point it at either of them, it went sailing into the air. To his credit, Lucius managed not to make any undignified yelping sounds in response. But Jared, who could move much faster than his arthritic joints should have indicated, still snatched the flying wand from the air before Lucius could make any attempt at retrieving it. Smirking, he handed it to Augusta - who apparently could draw  _and_ cast a Disarming Jinx faster than Lucius could draw - and said, "That. That is why I tolerate you."

"Oh,  _you_  tolerate  _me,_ " said Augusta, rolling her eyes and sliding Lucius' wand up her sleeve along with her own. "I taught you half the hexes you know. Little Malfoy, you can have your wand back if you fetch me a cup of tea."

Lucius Malfoy did not have a pleasant Valentines' Day.

* * *

Hermione had a reasonably pleasant Valentines' Day at Durmstrang. This was largely because it was only loosely recognized as a holiday at all, being English in origin. Some of the Scandinavian students were going about giving people chocolate, and someone - possibly Adriana's brother - had managed to coordinate the appearance of a great bouquet of flowers above the Headmaster's chair, but it was altogether a relatively low-key event. The vast majority of the day, for Hermione, was spent sitting in the library with Viktor - doing homework, drinking tea, and completely ignoring the explosion that had resulted from Natasha giving Jarek a red rose and then running off bright-red and refusing to talk to him. Adriana kept wandering past the library door, snickering; Viktor suggested, amused, that she was probably playing messenger owl.

She was well past caught up, now; there were few things more effective at motivating dedicated studying than the raw terror of being assassinated by one's ostensible family members. Getting through the winter break had been almost entirely adrenaline and fear, for Hermione. She'd spent two hours every morning trying to force her hair to lie flat and black and  _unrecognizable_ , and then sat at breakfast with Theo and been lectured about proper etiquette and how to act appropriately superior. They'd gone to more gatherings of High Society than she could count, and she had to have a different dress and different shoes and different jewelry for each one. Thankfully, she did not have to break her previous personal decision not to wear any green: They didn't let her wear red, because Gryffindor, but almost everything the Notts owned was either black or purple, or occasionally dark gray. She didn't get to  _keep_  any of the ridiculously expensive jewelry, of course, but all the same she'd had to memorize what each one was made of and where it had come from ("Oh, this? Antipodean opals, of course, it belonged to my great-grandmother"), and the only bright side of this was that she now had an arsenal of totally useless information about gemstone classification. Also, she'd learned that she was absolutely terrible at walking in high heels, because despite her grades she was in fact only thirteen. She almost didn't hate Theo anymore, even though he was a self-righteous snarky git, because he had fast reflexes, and had caught her by the arm before she tripped down the stairs at Malfoy Manor.

She had not had the misfortune of having to convince Draco Malfoy that he had never met her before, because he was apparently staying at Hogwarts for the Christmas break, for reasons unexplained. All the same, it had still felt  _unbelievably weird_ to be following Theo around while he smugly showed off "My genius cousin who goes to Durmstrang," because she knew perfectly well that all the people shaking her hand and nodding and congratulating her on her grades would happily put her head on a spike if they found out who she was. Worse, she knew perfectly well that Theo and his father would be first in line, if her grades slipped or she stopped generating enough status boost to be worth the effort. So she smiled and shook hands and introduced herself "Hermione Nott, fourth-year at Durmstrang." And when Ally Runcorn made a snide comment about how she was much more interesting than the Mudblood girl of the same name who'd dropped out of Hogwarts the previous year, she laughed as offhandedly as possible and offered a pre-prepared joke about Muggles trying to sound intelligent by stealing Shakespearean names.

Easily the most terrifying part of the vacation, however, had been the reason she'd had to awkwardly write to Ron Weasley that she couldn't help him with his Heir of Slytherin problem, once she had returned and could borrow a school owl. Millicent Bulstrode, wondering why so many of the Slytherins had stayed over the break, had brought up the Chamber of Secrets. Daphne Greengrass had said something dismissive about  _certain people_ wanting to make it clear that they did not fear the Monster, and then she'd cut herself off mid-sentence as Lucius Malfoy swept down upon the gathering of young students. Lord Malfoy, teeth grinding, had threatened to have them all murdered in their sleep if they were ever so stupid as to bring up the subject again. Apparently, it was  _very bad practice_ to discuss such things with anyone, because if you  _were_ responsible you didn't want anyone to find out, and if you  _weren't_ responsible it was in your best interest to know  _as little as possible_ so as not to be blamed. Theo had asked his father about it later, and Old Nott had been if possible  _even more terrifying_ about it, and Hermione had concluded that she was probably in immediate danger if she continued to be involved in any way.

Eventually on the last day of the holiday she'd been given a stern look and shooed off to catch a Portkey, and only once back in her dorm room for several hours did her heart rate measurably decline.

By the fourteenth of February she was as relaxed as she was capable of being, which wasn't actually very much. She'd not only caught up, she'd started getting well ahead of her class again. She was seriously considering trying to figure out how to skip ahead a further year, and catch up to Viktor (or get close - he  _was_ the highest-scoring student in  _his_ year). Durmstrang students took OWLs at the end of their sixth year, not their fifth, and if she could do them  _next_  year she'd be on track for NEWTs the year after next and then she could - ... well ... - Okay, admittedly she wasn't actually sure what she'd do next, if she earned her NEWTs before she turned sixteen. She wasn't anything like stupid enough to assume that standard student qualifications, even the highest ones you could earn from Durmstrang, would be sufficient to defend herself against a century-old wizard who'd survived since Grindelwald's war. So she'd either have to continue being conspicuously useful and/or scholarly, or she'd have to run away very far. Somewhere in her copious free time she'd have to look up whether wizards had anything resembling  _universities_  ...

* * *

_March 1, 1993_

> _[enclosed: Elminster Gygax's_ An Intermediate Course in Abjuration _, fourth edition, and Cantankerous Nott's updated_ The Sacred Twenty-Eight _,_   _eighty-ninth edition with birthdays and lineage charts_ ]
> 
> Dear Ron,
> 
> Happy birthday.
> 
> (Your birthday shows up as soon as the eighty-sixth edition, 1980. Did you know some of them are self-updating?)
> 
> The Gygax book is your birthday present. I'll need the genealogy back at some point, though, sorry - I hope it helps with your mysterious project.
> 
> Hermione Granger

* * *

(It took her weeks to stop freaking out about how _Hermione Genevieve Nott, September 12, 1979 - present_ , was actually in the self-updating genealogies, with her attendance at Durmstrang and everything, listed right across from her cousin  _Theodore Andreas Nott, January 29, 1980 - present_ and his status as a Hogwarts student. Apparently her elderly "great-uncle" knew how to meddle with whatever enchantments those ran on. Which was, frankly, terrifying.)

* * *

" _How_ old are you again?" asked Jarek of Hermione one day, bemused, around the time her friends had collectively noticed that she was drifting pretty far forward in the curriculum. She was to the point of getting Viktor to tell her what his assignments were so that she could attempt them. Just that day she'd pulled seven out of ten fighting Natasha in Battle Magic class, which was a personal best; her cheery Russian roommate was slightly put out, but mostly impressed at the progress Hermione was making, given that she was noticeably smaller than everyone else in the class, even the tiny Korean girl. (The  _oh my god she's so cute_  had declined slightly, but ... only slightly, especially since she was failing utterly to keep her hair in check again now that she wasn't spending hours every morning trying vainly to flatten it. Adriana had started calling her  _minunăţie,_  usually with affectionate headpats, which honestly was kind of sweet and Hermione didn't mind it.)

"Thirteen," she said absently, and went back to practicing shield charms.


	10. April Fools

_March 12, 1993_

> _[enclosed: Cantankerous Nott's The Sacred Twenty-Eight, eighty-ninth edition]_
> 
> Dear Hermione,
> 
> Thank you for the book! I've never gotten a book for my birthday before. I didn't know there were so many different kinds of shields. Our Defense professor this year is absolutely useless, even worse than Quirrell was. The guy's written books - Gilderoy Lockhart, you might've heard of him - and he can't even Stun a pixie. We spend all his classes reading stories out of his stupid books and not actually doing anything, we're learning so little that we don't even really know what we don't know. You've been a lot of help with that, we have a better idea now of what to look for in the library, so thank you! We've got notes and stuff, now, too, not just from the one I'm returning with this letter - do you also need your Fundamentals book back?
> 
> Ron Weasley

* * *

_March 26, 1993_

> Ron -
> 
> Yes, please.
> 
> HJG

* * *

Ordinarily, Hogwarts was a great fan of April Fools' Day. The Slytherins and the Ravenclaws largely liked to pretend they were too mature for that kind of thing, though some of the Ravenclaws occasionally devolved into extremely elaborate prank wars if someone thought of something that was too clever not to do. Among the Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors, however, it was usually an explosion of bright colors, peculiar sounds, and giggling; there was a running contest to see who could make Dumbledore laugh the hardest. Ordinarily, the castle glittered and shone with enthusiasm on that particular day of the year, and the halls echoed with the bright booming sound of the headmaster laughing. The contest had been cancelled without fanfare, this year, because Dumbledore wasn't here.

Some of the Hufflepuffs still made a valiant effort to cheer up the student body in the absence of their friendly Headmaster, because that was what they did, but their friendly rivals in Gryffindor didn't even really try.

The first of April, after all, was Fred and George Weasley's birthday. There was usually cake, and singing, and increasingly absurd magical tricks. For more than the two years since they'd started school, even - it had been happening since Bill Weasley's first year, seven years previously, when his six-year-old brothers had somehow contrived to send him a cheery Howler full of glitter. It was the one day every year that the elder and more serious Weasleys would smile and indulge their brothers' silliness, and encourage their classmates to do the same. After all, the twins were never malicious. They didn't have it in them to be really  _mean_  for such a friendly holiday. It was always funny, reasonably benevolent things, like "suddenly you have feathers" and "the stairs are temporarily pillows, let's go banister-diving" and "everyone is ginger today!" and that sort of thing. Or maybe the food at the Slytherin table exploded in showers of sparkly red paint (that had been their first year), which wasn't much fun for the Slytherins, but it wasn't like anyone got hurt. And even some of the Slytherins (the ones that had ducked quickly) had found some humor in the situation.  _  
_

This year, the Weasley twins were in the hospital wing, silent and mirthless, and no one in Gryffindor House really felt right trying to have April Fools' Day  _without_ them. So there was silence in Gryffindor, and strained smiles in the direction of the friendly Hufflepuffs who tried to cheer them up. Ron got up early and spent the morning in the greenhouses with Neville, doing what he could to help with the Mandrakes who would awaken the Petrified students. Ginny sat at breakfast humming sadly, and Percy sat next to her with his book of curses and sang quietly along.  _Happy birthday to Fred, happy birthday to George, happy birthday ... you're not here ... happy birthday to you._

* * *

Lucius Malfoy spent his April first trying to break the locks on his library door, accompanied by the faint sound of scratching quills and the slightly less faint sound of Jared Nott and Augusta Longbottom bickering about rune charts. Honestly, he had no idea how they hadn't tried to kill each other yet.

* * *

Hermione Granger-now-Nott, on the other hand, whose voracious interest in protection magic for reasons she refused to explain to anyone, had made her more than only the top student in her Battle Magic class. She was, by now, also the go-to expert on cursebreaking for anyone at Durmstrang who lost a duel or failed to dodge a prank and was too embarrassed to go to the Life Magic professor for help; and so she had a very amusing April Fools' Day. She spent most of the day taking apart various very creative hexes, ranging from a plague of unusually stubborn tongue-tying jinxes among some of the younger students to a sixth-year whose ex-boyfriend had turned all of his clothes a truly eye-searing shade of neon yellow. "You know you could be asking them for favors _,_ " said Adriana around two hours past lunchtime, when she and Jarek had dragged Hermione to the Hearths-hall to make her eat. "No one would think it unfair."

"It's good practice," protested Hermione. "And I like helping people."

Her roommate sighed. "British idealism, ah. Strange and cute. Jarek, where are Viktor and Natasha?"

"Why should I know?" protested the Icelander, shooing away a seventh-year with his ears smoking who really ought to know how to solve his own problems. At the totally incredulous looks from the two girls, which said,  _you literally keep obsessive charts of the entire school's whereabouts, of course you know where they are,_ he sighed. "Third floor. Some absolute  _idiot_  carved a bunch of Grindelwaldian iconography into the walls."

"Ah."

The news that anyone at Durmstrang still thought Grindelwald had been in the  _right_ was, sadly, not surprising to Hermione. She hadn't read as much history as she might have liked, however, so busy had she been with her frantic quest to learn to defend herself, and she had no idea what  _Grindelwaldian iconography_  might actually look like or how one went about recognizing it. Nor did she have any idea how to ask without looking like an idiot, so she just filed the question away for later inquiry. At some point. And the others did return eventually for their lunch, looking rather pleased with themselves.

After her Languages class, a little first-year came running up to them, tears running down his face. His hands were bruised and disjointed, as if someone had stomped on them. "Miss Nott," he said shakily, pleading, "can you help me?"

Natasha said something absolutely scathing in Russian, which Hermione could not immediately translate but recognized the general tone of. "No," she added for good measure. Jarek sneered in the kid's general direction and didn't bother to address him, Viktor outright pretended he wasn't there, and Adriana rolled her eyes.

Hermione, startled, said, "What? Of course I can help you, sweetie, what happened?"

"I - um - "

"He fell down the  _stairs,_ " said Natasha, her voice high and sharp and mocking.

It had been a long time since Hermione heard so clearly the alarm bells in her head that said,  _you have made friends with people who are evil_.

* * *

Still, school had to struggle on, without its gamekeeper and without its Headmaster. Professor McGonagall was looking increasingly frazzled; as Deputy Headmistress she was obligated to take on the duties that Dumbledore wasn't performing due to his summary eviction from the premises. The forest edged glacially closer to Hagrid's hut, unchecked by his usual maintenance; Professor Sprout started setting her sixth-years to the task of calming down some of the flora on the grounds that  _wasn't_ contained neatly in greenhouses. OWLs and NEWTs for the fifth and seventh years were approaching, slowly but surely. Early in April Ravenclaw scraped out a victory over Slytherin by only twenty points, putting them just barely in the lead for the Quidditch Cup. Luna Lovegood presented a very startled Cho Chang with a bright blue feathered hat, and then ran off to the library again before the Ravenclaw Seeker could respond properly to this bizarre prize.

Some of the sixth-year NEWT Defense students put on a tournament of exhibition duels near the end of the month. Percy Weasley declined to participate, even though he  _was_ one of the three students in his cohort who'd actually managed to pass the Defense OWL the previous year, but he showed up anyway. Many other students appeared in the Great Hall to watch or to try their hand at fighting Hogwarts' ostensible best; there were few enough people in the actual class that they'd let other people sign up to participate, like Cedric Diggory who was still in fourth year but was far and away the top of his class, and Jack Rosier who had failed his OWL but knew a truly ridiculous number of curses, and so on. It took hours for the other second-year Gryffindors to talk Ron out of volunteering, and it only eventually worked because Neville pointed out that his mother would probably actually ground him until he graduated Hogwarts if she found out.

But they did turn up for the show, anyway, because they couldn't not. And predictably, getting a bunch of kids together in the Great Hall with the express purpose of having a duelling competition started to produce unsanctioned fighting almost immediately. Although, in defense of the NEWT students, it actually happened  _slightly_  less quickly than it had at Lockhart's original attempt. Still ... people using unapproved spells, people punching each other, people on the sidelines fighting over who they wanted to win or who they'd bet on ... they were barely a quarter of the way through the randomized tournament brackets (supplied by an amused NEWT Arithmancy student who was dating one of the organizers) when things started to get out of hand. Lockhart, of course, was useless to handle this, and Professor Flitwick had his hands full playing host for the people from the Auror Office who'd turned up to watch the show.  _  
_

_Ron_  of course was busy fighting with Draco's erstwhile minions, who were a bit lost without their leader but nevertheless basically understood that they were supposed to oppose the nearest Weasley wherever convenient. The  _rest_ of the second-year Gryffindors, however, calmly edged the rest of the crowd away from this conflict, stood in a little ring separating Ron and Crabbe and Goyle from everyone else, and thereafter ignored the problem. Blaise Zabini and Daphne Greengrass, who'd also turned up to watch the show, participated reasonably amiably in this process; they clearly were more interested in preventing Crabbe and Goyle from embarrassing their House than they were in actually preventing them from getting hexed repeatedly by Ron. Various awkward nods were exchanged, and the Slytherins seemed to appreciate that none of the Gryffindors were commenting on the somewhat anxious way Blaise was keeping an eye on his unusually pale and quiet cousin.

In between uncomfortable House relations, and occasionally paying attention to the actual competition that was taking place, they got to watch Percy. He was a head taller than most of the other students, now; he had the same too-tall-and-too-skinny build as Ron did, and four more years of growing. It ought to have been ridiculous-looking to see him stalking around in his obsessively pressed robes, wireframe glasses glinting in the light of spellfire, with his bright red hair and freckles, looming over everyone like an awkward, irritable scarecrow. It  _would_  have been funny, probably, except that he was breaking up unauthorized fights with absolute silence, complete lack of discrimination by age, gender, or House, and absolutely brutal efficiency. "Ah," said Parvati, watching with interest as Percy disarmed yet another pair of bickering would-be gamblers, glued their wands to the nearest wall, and moved on without a word, " _that's_ why he didn't sign up to fight."

"I had the impression he just didn't believe in duelling," said Blaise.

Parvati shrugged. "Well, that too."

"Diggory's  _winning_ ," observed Lavender, who was actually still paying attention to the competition.

"What, the Super Hufflepuff?" said Seamus, startled. "Really? Isn't he only, what, fourth year?"

"The  _Super Hufflepuff_?" repeated Neville.

Seamus gave him a confused look. "You haven't heard that? You spend practically all of your free time with Professor Sprout."

" ... I have never heard that," agreed Neville. "Seriously? People call him that?"

"Yeah," said Lavender. "He gets perfect grades, he's on their Quidditch team, he's probably going to be their Captain next year, he's taking  _all_  the electives and  _still_ getting perfect grades, he runs tutoring sessions, he's ridiculously nice to everyone ... he's a Super Hufflepuff."

"And also he can duel, apparently," said Parvati.

"That's not fair," grumbled Seamus. "He can't be good at  _everything_."

"Maybe he's secretly gay," suggested Daphne.

Everyone else gave her a baffled look. "Would that be bad?" said Dean, eyebrows rising.

"It'd be bad for the  _girls_ ," snickered Blaise.

* * *

"Luna," said Ginny patiently, "this is just some prank by the Slytherins. There is no such thing as the Chamber of Secrets."

* * *

A bespectacled cat slipped in the door of the Hog's Head Inn and hopped smoothly onto the bar. She padded across the surface and snagged a couple of peanuts off the bartender's plate. He rolled his eyes and scratched her behind the ears, which treatment she suffered with a somewhat stern glare before hopping back off the bar and gliding into the shadowy rear of the room. "Cats, mate, can't get rid of 'em," he said cheerily to the one wizard currently sitting at the bar, who didn't show any particular signs of being interested in the proceedings.

A moment later, a stern-backed, grey-haired woman with a pointed green tartan hat was sitting politely across a table from a tall wizard with long white hair and dark purple robes, having drawn exactly zero attention as she crossed the room. "Good evening," she said, refraining from addressing the subject of her attention by name. Aberforth had a thing about that, and in any case it was usually best not to draw the ears of people who might be  _interested_ if they heard the name of the headmaster who was currently banned from the premises of the school. Hogsmeade wasn't actually part of Hogwarts grounds, but all the same, it was best to be cautious about these things.

"And to you," nodded the old wizard, doing his deputy the same courtesy. "How did the duelling tournament go, might I ask?"

"Not surprisingly, better than when Gilderoy tried," sighed the ex-cat. "Which is, I am sure you realize, not an exceptionally high bar."

"Indeed."

"Still, I am quite impressed with some of my students, I must say."

* * *

The last practice session of the month of April for the second-year Gryffindors found them squelching somewhat muddily into the Transfiguration classroom, having just been rained on the entire way back from Herbology. They were short Neville, who had stayed behind in the greenhouses to help Professor Sprout with her rather rowdy Mandrakes; they were moody and temperamental this late in their growth cycle, and needed careful management. He would be a little bit late, though not a lot, and they had originally planned to start without him. But they arrived to find a rather unusual surprise, for all that April Fools' Day had been nearly an entire month before.

"I'm not imagining that, right?" said Ron.

"Nah," said Seamus.

"That's illegal, right?" said Ron.

"Yep," said Parvati.

Thus it was that Neville came in fifteen minutes late to find his classmates still staring rather shockedly at the desk at the front of the room, upon which sat a parchment reading in neat, familiar script,  _For my unusually dedicated students,_  and on top of that, a slim book which belonged very much to the Restricted Section of the Library: the revised 1928 translation of Rowena Ravenclaw's  _Animali Fieri_ , the original instruction manual on how to become an Animagus.  _  
_

"That's definitely illegal," said Neville.

The others all nodded.

It was very, extremely, utterly illegal for minors to become Animagi. It was even more illegal than just trying to do it without a license. It was also supposed to be horrifyingly difficult and potentially dangerous, which in theory was why it was illegal. It was the sort of illegal that people got thrown in Azkaban for encouraging or enabling. You could get in trouble just for owning a copy of this book if you weren't on record with the Ministry as attempting to learn. You were supposed to have passed a Transfiguration NEWT with at least an E to even be allowed to  _apply_  for a learning permit. They, on the other hand, were second-year students. Second-year students with better collective Transfiguration grades than any cohort in decades, sure, but second-year students. There was no way this was safe, or a good idea, or even possible.

And there was a cat, with very distinctive spectacle markings around its eyes, sitting calmly on Professor McGonagall's desk, smirking at them.

* * *

"I think Professor Flitwick's friends approve of you," said Penny brightly as she settled on the bench next to Percy, leaning slightly on his shoulder and smiling at him. She was talking, of course, about the wizards from the Auror Office who'd turned up to watch the duelling tournament, who apparently were old friends of Flitwick's. "Did you notice? They were looking at  _you_  almost as much as Diggory."

Percy tried valiantly not to be offended, and ended up sighing. "I don't  _want_ to be a duellist," he objected.

"I know, I know," she waved his disgruntled expression off cheerfully, "but you looked good, and it never hurts to have good recommendations."

"From  _MLE_?" said Percy, a little despairingly. He wanted to work for International Relations, and rather suspected that they were not interested in the same sort of people that Law Enforcement were. "They'll just think I'm  _crazy_."

Penny frowned. "Hmm. Good point. Sorry." She deliberately changed the subject, picking something essentially at random. "Speaking of  _suspicious_ , you know that first-year girl I was telling you about, Lovegood, the one that's friends with your little sister?"

"Sure?" Percy had honestly not been paying that much attention to Ginny's social life. He just intermittently made sure she ate enough, and gave her Pepper-Up when she got sick. The fine details of who she sat with in classes or whatever were sort of lost on him.

His girlfriend gave him an amused look. "Anyway, she got detention  _again_  for being in the library past curfew, and she will  _not_ shut up about the stupid Chamber of Secrets. Ginny - you should be proud of her - she's started telling the girl to stop being silly, I saw them arguing about it just yesterday."

"Oh, good for her," said Percy. "I hope she doesn't lose a friend over it, but I suppose if this first-year of yours  _really_  thinks this silly myth is a plausible alternative hypothesis to  _the Slytherins are being awful again_ , maybe it's good riddance."

"Oh, probably," said Penny, "none of the other first-years seem to like her very much, anyway, I imagine your sister was just trying to be nice."

* * *

The Gryffindor second-years normally blocked out a three-hour period on Monday evenings after dinner, to meet and practice duelling. They were always extremely scrupulous about getting back to the common room before curfew afterwards; no one really wanted to test McGonagall's patience further by treading on the rules even more obviously than they currently were. It wasn't actually against any specific rules to hang out in a classroom and throw hexes at each other, but it wasn't exactly the sort of behavior that professors normally encouraged. Neville had observed at one point that he thought their Head of House wasn't precisely being  _accommodating_ so much as she was sort of resigned.

This was, mind you, a conversation that took place  _before_ she all but handed them an extremely illegal Animagus manual. _  
_

At that point it was sort of obvious to the entire group, even notoriously unobservant Ron Weasley, that Professor McGonagall was actually trying to help.

"I mean, unless she's trying to set us up," said Parvati, frowning at the book on the table. None of them had touched it yet. At the incredulous looks, she said somewhat apologetically, "Um, Padma gave me a lecture the other day about how sometimes things look like a good idea and they aren't - because of the thing at the duelling club - and it occurred to me that getting us to do something horribly illegal would be a really good way to get us all in huge trouble - sorry." She glanced a little nervously at the tabby cat curled up in the corner. The tabby cat completely ignored her.

"Wait, hold on, that's a good point," said Neville. Several incredulous looks, Parvati inclusive, turned on him. The spectacled cat in the corner gave him a rather severe look. He winced. "No, I mean, not  _Professor McGonagall_  setting us up, that'd be silly, I mean, someone else. Trying to get  _us_ to do something horribly illegal that McGonagall would almost definitely get  _blamed for_."

"Ohhh," said Lavender, speaking for everyone, "yeah, that would be bad."

"Uh ... " said Dean, after a moment's alarmed silence, "should we report this to Dumbledore, then?"

The cat helpfully turned into Professor McGonagall. They all jumped about a foot; Seamus actually yelped. The dramatic transformation mid-class-period was generally scheduled for the beginning of third-year Transfiguration class; none of them had actually seen her do that before. They'd just been assuming the cat was a spy or something. "It would be highly irresponsible of me to provide my underage students with any illegal study material," said Professor McGonagall airily, as if this were a completely normal conversation to be having, "and I'm sure that Headmaster Dumbledore would agree that the idea is ridiculous."

Translated:  _Y_ _es, I did actually give you that book on purpose. Don't worry, you will not get in trouble and neither will I._

" ... okay ... " said Ron, "so ... do we ... " he gestured vaguely at the book.

Professor McGonagall studiously pretended it was not there. "You should do your homework, Mr. Weasley," she said, and turned back into a cat.

"Is anyone else getting that feeling again that Hogwarts is just  _unbearably strange?_ " said Dean, somewhat helplessly.

"Oh, yeah, I get that all the time," said Lavender vaguely. She'd produced a  _Witch Weekly_  magazine from somewhere and was flipping through it with a somewhat disgruntled expression. "Ugh, the first step is  _meditation_ , this is going to suck."

Everyone looked quizzically at her.

Seamus was the first to realize the Animagus book was no longer on the desk. "That's - is that the book, you've got it in your hand?"

"Uh, yeah?" said Lavender, looking up, confused.

"You look like you've got a Witch Weekly," explained Seamus. Lavender put the book down. It continued to look like a magazine. The six children all stared somewhat uneasily at it. Seamus suggested somewhat hesitantly, "Someone else want to pick it up?", and eventually Neville reached out and picked the 'magazine' off the table. It did not noticeably change shape.

Neville opened it up and said, "This is ... actually a Witch Weekly magazine?", tilting his head at it.

Ron said, "Give it back to Lavender," so Neville did.

Lavender reported that it was, so far as she could tell, still a book. "It doesn't even  _look_  like a magazine to me," she said. "It just still looks like a paperback book with a weird Latin title."

"Um ... that's weird," said Ron.

"Is it?" asked Dean curiously. "Honestly, I assumed it was less weird than  _people turning into animals._ "

"No, yeah, that's really weird," agreed Neville. "Although, in retrospect, we should have assumed immediately that the cat was McGonagall. Ron, any other ideas?"

"Lavender, can you make it change shape if you try?" offered Ron.

Lavender gave the book/magazine a stern look and said, "Be a book!", and when they all failed to react as if it had obeyed this instruction, she shrugged helplessly. "I dunno, probably not?"

"Okay ... um ... you know, I've heard people say Hogwarts is  _shy_ , maybe the book is too, maybe it doesn't want to change if we're looking at it," suggested Ron. "Everybody turn around." They did. "Anything different, Lavender?"

"It ... still looks like a book to me?" said Lavender. "I don't think I can tell if it changes for you."

"Good point," admitted Ron. There was a pause for thought. "You try looking away too?"

Lavender said, "Okay," and after a beat, "I'm not looking at it anymore."

Ron turned around. "Okay, still looks like a magazine," he reported, "lemme pick it up - aha," he said triumphantly. "It's a book now."

Everyone else turned to look, without being told. "Looks like a copy of  _Staple Spells for Duellists, volume three_ ," observed Neville. "I think it's changing into - what it thinks we're most likely to be reading?"  _  
_

"It thinks I'm a bimbo," pouted Lavender.

"No, I don't think that's right," said Ron slowly, thoughtfully, "I think it's picking what  _other people_ are likely to think isn't strange. I've already read the whole Staple Spells series, I wouldn't actually be reading it again, but it's the  _kind of thing_ that a random person looking at me will think is totally normal and they won't question it."

"I guess that's a little better," allowed Lavender. "Still, though."

"Lav, I love you, but nobody who doesn't know you  _really well_  thinks you aren't a total airhead," said Parvati, patting her friend affectionately on the shoulder.

"It's not a fatal personality flaw or anything," said Seamus cheerfully. "I don't actually  _understand_ Witch Weekly, but you can like it if you want, it's not my job to judge you." He shrugged, and Lavender smiled brilliantly at him. "Anyway, this is actually pretty good security, isn't it? If it won't change if more than one person is looking at it?"

"A little inconvenient," said Ron, frowning at the book, "because it probably means only one of us can see it at a time."

"True. But still," Seamus said, "I think it's worth it not to get caught with a book that changes shape, right?"

"Sure, so long as we don't leave it unattended long enough for someone  _else_ to get hold of it," said Ron thoughtfully. "I think we're going to have to take turns carrying it around."

The question of  _how to not get instantly arrested_ settled, they spent the rest of their three hours sitting in a circle as far away from the door as possible, taking turns reading aloud. This was supposedly so dangerous that people their age were banned from even trying it; they did not want to try  _anything_ until they were sure they weren't going to do something incredibly stupid. At first Parvati went to get parchment to take notes, but Ron pointed out that the  _notes_ wouldn't be protected from being read by other people. Dean then pulled out  _his_  parchment and started making up pictorial mnemonics, which were not so transparent to observation, although they had the flaw that they were also meaningless to everyone else in the room.

That was solvable, though; getting arrested, less so.

The first step  _was_ going to be meditation, but the zeroth: studying.

* * *

They actually got as far as the handshaking step, at the Ravenclaw/Gryffindor Quidditch game.

Roger Davies, now Ravenclaw's Quidditch Captain since Keith MacDougal had graduated, looked extremely relieved to see that the entire Gryffindor team seemed to be awake and not showing signs of reality warping. Still: "I promise not to gloat if we win because you're missing your real Beaters," he said apologetically. Oliver had produced substitutes, having had at least some notice. He'd come up with Cormac McLaggen and Geoff Hooper, who were both basically competent if annoying, but it was nothing like  _actually_  replacing the twins, which would have been nigh unto impossible. So Gryffindor was were at a substantial disadvantage, even given that the new Ravenclaw Seeker, Cho Chang, was inexperienced; she was reasonably talented. "I mean, not that I won't still be proud," added Roger, "I mean, you guys are good, but I'll try not to - "

Roger stopped abruptly. He, along with everyone else, had just turned sharply at the sound of a horn, to see Professor McGonagall striding grimly onto the field, Lee Jordan's microphone in her hand. She announced, loudly and clearly, that the game was cancelled, and so was the rest of the Quidditch Cup, until further notice. There had been, she said, another attack. She completely and utterly disregarded Oliver and Roger's indignant yelling, and walked right up to Percy Weasley, and said, her sharp steely voice rather toneless, "Can I ask you to come with me, Mr. Weasley?"

"Um," said Percy. He glanced, helpless, into the stands. Ron - bless the Weasley hair - was easy to find, on his feet already. He looked like he was counting his friends. "Yeah, I - sure?"

"You don't seriously think  _Prefect Weasley_ did it?" said Cho Chang incredulously. "His  _brothers_ \- "

"No, of course they don't - "

Oliver's voice, explaining to the others that the faculty probably wanted Percy for some boring crowd-control reason, trailed away as Percy followed McGonagall at a brisk walk up towards the castle. It was immediately obvious to Percy that although Oliver's guess had been reasonable, they were walking  _away_  from most of the student body and so McGonagall probably wanted him for something unrelated to crowd control. He trailed his Head of House for several silent, confused minutes, and then when they were about halfway across the first floor, he said finally, "Um, professor, not that I'm not glad to help, but where are we - "

"Hospital wing," said Professor McGonagall.

"Hos - oh, no," said Percy, feeling his heart sinking. "Oh, no, don't - don't say you're about to tell me - "

"No one is dead," interrupted Professor McGonagall gently, as they crossed through the doors into the pristine white of the Hogwarts Hospital, "but - "

" _Penelope_ ," groaned Percy. His realization had been correct. He was here for emotional reasons, not practical ones. He didn't bother asking how Professor McGonagall had known before his brothers that Percy had a girlfriend; the Transfiguration professor was extremely observant and he and Penelope had NEWT Transfiguration together. Flitwick probably knew, too, although he couldn't imagine Snape or Lockhart cared enough to have bothered noticing. "Why wasn't she - she should have been at the game - who's that?" He nodded at the tiny girl on the bed next to Penelope's, absently. Most of his attention was on his Petrified girlfriend, on her frozen expression of shocked, disbelieving terror, but he was still at least approximately aware of other things. "Some first-year?"

"First-year Ravenclaw," agreed McGonagall. "Luna Lovegood. They were found by the library. This was on the floor nearby," she added, holding up a familiar-looking hand mirror.

"That's Penny's, yeah," said Percy. He frowned, something in his memory lighting up to remind him he'd heard that name before. "She doesn't  _like_ Luna Lovegood."

McGonagall made a frustrated face. "I was hoping you'd be able to shed some light on this."

"Sorry," sighed Percy. "No. I have no - well. I suppose I  _do_  have some idea. Penny's Muggleborn, and she's been near as vocal as I have about not thinking that Slytherin's Monster is real. She's an obvious target." He made a face. "So like our Slytherins, isn't it, not realizing that shutting down a dissenting voice is as good as admitting she had a point."

"I see," said Professor McGonagall, her face much too neutral. "Quite so, Mr. Weasley."

* * *

"I don't suppose," said Narcissa Malfoy to her husband over dinner one evening, quite acidly, "that you've learned anything interesting today?"

Lucius Malfoy, who had spent all day in the library, sighed. He didn't really have the energy to be properly upset that his beloved wife was mad at him, and besides, she sort of had a point. He'd gone and tried to frame Arthur Weasley for a murder, and all that had happened is that Weasley's incompetent daughter had apparently lost the stupid magic book so thoroughly that her brothers had been the first, Petrified, targets. Followed by Lucius' own son, who was going to need a great deal of tutoring over the summer given how much school he was missing. If he tried to point at Ginevra Weasley now, he'd be laughed out of the Auror Office before anyone bothered to actually put her under Veritaserum and see that she actually had had the thing; they'd assume he was (a) holding a grudge and (b) crazy. And that was assuming the Auror Office would even  _believe him_ that anything was going on at Hogwarts, never mind that it had been caused by a magic blank diary. It wasn't like he could  _admit_ that he thought this because his father had told him the diary would kill Muggleborns if given to an impressionable young Hogwarts student. That would just get  _him_ in trouble.

There was a long, expectant pause.

"Well," he said, after gathering his thoughts, "I learned that someone has put an Immolation Curse on Old Nott's son. I learned that Augusta Longbottom also knows about the attacks at Hogwarts and thinks that Arcturus Black is responsible despite the fact that he's dead, since she  _doesn't_ know about the book. I learned that there is considerable scholarly disagreement about whether Salazar Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets actually exists - that is to say, there are people who think it actually  _does exist,_  even if they don't have much in the way of proof. I learned that Jared Nott either did not know about the attacks or has reason to pretend he didn't. I learned that Xenophilius Lovegood's daughter was among the most recent victims, the other of which was some Mudblood prefect."

"And from this information you have concluded?" prompted Narcissa, eyebrows slightly elevated.

"Theodore Nott and Ginevra Weasley are fighting over possession of the magic book, which either  _actually_  gives access to the Chamber of Secrets or simply contains some great power which permits young children to cast Petrifaction Curses," said Lucius. "It's the only thing I can think of that explains all the victims so far. Although I'm not sure why  _either_ of them might have strong motivation to attack a Lovegood, knowing Xeno, she could just be extraordinarily annoying. And if the book  _does_ impart high-level knowledge of curses, that would explain how an eleven-year-old Weasley might have been able to lay such a curse on Theodore."  _  
_

"But of course," said Narcissa, "you haven't shared this conclusion with your uncle."

"Of course not, I'm not an idiot," said Lucius. "He would assassinate the little Weasley in her sleep and I would get blamed instantly."  _  
_

Narcissa nodded approvingly. "Has it occurred to you, however," she inquired, "that this chaos might be precisely what the Dark Lord intended when he gave that artifact to your father?"

This had, in fact, not occurred to Lucius. He'd just been assuming that the intended effect was for a bunch of Mudbloods to die and that he'd mucked it up somehow. But that would assume that the Dark Lord acted  _reasonably_ , with well-thought-out purpose. As opposed to, for instance, in whatever way he thought would cause the most pain for the most people. The Dark Lord liked to torture people for fun. It had been entirely naive of him to assume that any plan Voldemort had made would include provisions like 'don't hurt Draco,' as much as he wished it would have. "You have a point," he admitted. He glanced, almost involuntarily, at his left arm. "Bloody good thing it is that he's gone, isn't it?"

"Quite," said Narcissa, patting his hand. "So, in summary, what have you learned today?"

He sighed. "Don't try to use Dark artifacts if you don't know what they do."

"Very good, dear."

* * *

Neville got a letter in the mail.

> _Dear Neville,_
> 
> _It may be of interest to you to know that Lord Malfoy seems to be the only person outside the walls of Hogwarts, save myself, who has heard about the Petrifactions. (Notice that this implies that he has an alternative source of information than whatever the administration has been telling parents, since Xenophilius Lovegood and Molly Weasley do not know.) His library has been of little other use to me, however; if Arcturus Black and Abraxas Malfoy laid a curse upon Hogwarts on their deathbeds, it was a curse I cannot break without going to Hogwarts myself._   _  
> _
> 
> _If you have Muggleborn friends, keep on your guard._
> 
> _A. M. Longbottom_

* * *

The duelling club met again, largely run by Cedric Diggory, who had been the strongest voice encouraging people to show up. Percy Weasley did appear, to stalk about and give everyone baleful looks, but he had to do considerably less work. Without Professor Flitwick's Auror friends making everyone inclined to show off, Cedric was able to keep order with only occasional assistance from the remaining NEWT Defense students who deigned to attend. There were fewer people, as well, without the draw of Professor Lockhart (who had failed to appear for the last meeting). Professor Flitwick was there, but largely to supervise, not to lead; Cedric was doing a remarkable job of getting everyone working productively, and the charms professor had the sense not to intervene.

The second-year Gryffindors showed up, and mostly did the drills Cedric had pulled from books and practiced against each other and the few other students from their class year who had turned up. Padma and Parvati started trying to work together against various permutations of their classmates, which usually worked reasonably well.

Ron Weasley drew some attention for his desire to duel anyone who was willing, regardless of how many years they had on him.

He lost, of course, every time, varying degrees of spectacularly. Most of the students here were fourth years and above, and Ron, for all his reading over the past months, had had very little actual, practical experience with duelling.

"Why are you still trying, Weasley?" said Adrian Pucey, almost curiously, as Flitwick  _ennervated_ him for roughly the twelfth time.

"Losing's how you learn," said Ron.

Cedric said brightly, "That's the spirit."


	11. The Oncoming Storm

At the speed they were going, it would likely take the little Gryffindor study club until well into June to read through the entire Animagus textbook, slowly and carefully and with great attention to detail. Ron, Neville, Seamus, Parvati, and Lavender took it in turns to read aloud, while Dean took bizarre pictographic notes, full of strange symbols, color codes, and arrows, and patiently explained his code to the others as he went. There was no point in being hasty about it; the process as outlined was monstrously complicated, and full of possible ways for them to seriously injure or kill themselves by making mistakes. An adult with competent Healing skills would be able to prevent or repair most of the failure modes, but those were rare - Healing was  _hard_. It was more or less instantly obvious, in other words, why this was normally illegal for minors. They  _had_ to be careful, because if one of them got hurt, they'd have to take that person to Madam Pomfrey and the jig would be up, and they'd all be in ludicrous amounts of trouble. "But Professor McGonagall thinks we can do it," said Neville quietly one day, when Seamus expressed concern about this. "And she must also think we  _should_. Or maybe that we need to. So let's not disappoint her, yeah?"

They stopped going to the library except to look things up, instead having their daily study sessions in the abandoned classroom they'd adopted for their own. One of the few benefits to the population drop caused by the wars was that there was a lot more space in the school now than anyone was actually using. They kept up with their homework, and practiced duelling, and every week devoted half of their Thursday evening study session to instead showing up for Cedric Diggory's duelling club. Ron continued to stubbornly attempt to fight anyone and everyone willing to bother, even as the number of students who consistently showed up for the club steadily declined. Professor Lockhart continued, against all evidence, to insist that obviously Hagrid had been responsible and everything would be fine now that he'd been arrested, never mind McGonagall's insistence upon continuing to force everyone to be shepherded from class to class by their professors. "After all," he said, with a slightly strained smile, when pressed, "when people other than  _me_  handle these sort of things, sometimes curses only get partly dispelled and have a little time to wear off, but the Ministry knows what they're doing and there won't be any others after those Ravenclaw girls, I am quite sure!"

But really no one was listening much to Lockhart, anymore. Everyone knew there was danger. It's just that, well, humans get  _tired_ of being on high alert all the time. It gets familiar. They get used to it, and they forget, and they relax, and they stop coming to duelling practice and they start breaking the rules. The sheer force of Percy Weasley's disapproval prevented any of the upper-year Gryffindors from breaking curfew, but every week someone else was caught doing something stupid. The six-year Slytherin prefects were caught in the prefects' bath late on a Thursday night, several Hufflepuffs were found trying to convince a suit of armor to tell them where the Chamber of Secrets was, Ginny Weasley was spotted-but-not-quite-caught in the Astronomy Tower taking apart telescopes for some reason, and several of the seventh-year Ravenclaws were caught sneaking into the library to get in extra study time for their upcoming NEWTs. But in theory, at any rate, the castle was still technically on High Security.

Percy also turned up like clockwork to glare balefully at anyone who even considered disturbing the duelling club, however, so despite the Security, Cedric (with irrepressible cheer) continued running it. In the absence of Penelope Clearwater who was in the hospital wing and Percy who wasn't participating, there was only one remaining sixth-year who'd passed the Defense OWL the previous year (another Ravenclaw, a Muggleborn boy called Timothy Llewellyn, no relation to the famous Quidditch player), but he showed up every week to fight Cedric.

Despite the vast incompetence of the Defense professor who'd succeeded Greengrass and preceded Quirrell, there were also three seventh-year NEWT Defense students, two Hufflepuffs (Eileen Blair and Christina Drummond) and a Slytherin (Nadia Shafiq), who had managed rather improbably to pass their OWL with sheer force of teamwork. They turned up every other week or so, more to trade off doing one-on-two drills and be superior at everyone than to actually help; one got the sense that they were there mostly for Obligatory Solidarity reasons, what with the Super Hufflepuff being _de facto_  Duelling Club Captain. The rest of the group was mostly Cedric's own cohort of fourth-years (all the Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors, most of Ravenclaw and Slytherin), a smattering of fifth-years who were either willing to take a break from studying for OWLs or thought duelling was  _more important_  than OWLs, and the second-year Gryffindors. And of course Professor Flitwick was always there, sometimes with Madam Pomfrey on hand if she was free, to make sure no one got seriously (or at least not permanently) injured.

No one else below fourth-year kept showing up past week three; they were too outmatched by the older students. A few other smaller splinter groups formed in spare classrooms, the friends of Draco Malfoy and Justin Finch-Fletchley respectively, but neither Slytherins nor Hufflepuffs were accustomed to learning things by repeatedly failing at them. That was a uniquely Gryffindor sort of behavior. It was, quite frankly, a uniquely  _Weasley_  sort of behavior. The non-Ron members of their little cohort generally practiced against one another or did drills, but Ron and only Ron persisted to demand that older students fight him. Cedric, laughingly approving, encouraged this behavior, no matter how many times Ron had to be peeled off of various surfaces. It was, at least, progressively taking longer every time for him to lose.

He also encouraged everyone to follow the young Gryffindors' model of traveling in groups, even when you weren't going to classes, which turned out not to help.

* * *

Mail at Durmstrang was delivered directly to students' bedside tables; because of the paranoid security surrounding the location of the school, any owls addressed to anyone on the premises would be diverted to a post station just outside the grounds. Whoever was on duty in the Security Office (the professors took this duty in turns) would check all the incoming and outgoing mail for dangerous magic, before forwarding it to its intended recipient.

This is why it was Natalia and Adriana, her roommates, who were present when Hermione opened up a parchment envelope with a purple half-moon seal on it, frowned at the paper inside for a small number of moments, and then shrieked,  _"What?_ " at a pitch normally reserved for very small children and opera singers.

* * *

In late April, around lunchtime on a Saturday, a third-year Hufflepuff boy came sprinting unevenly into the Great Hall and shrieked, " _There's another one!_ "

Ron, Seamus, and Parvati, who had just begun to wonder why the second half of their cohort was late returning from the library, gasped almost in unison, and were all on their feet by the time Professor McGonagall managed to break through the commotion and demand,  _"Where_ , boy? Who?"

"Th- the first floor," gasped the boy, over rising whispers of speculation about Hagrid escaping Azkaban. "Just - just around the corner - I don't know, Gryffindors - "

McGonagall was out of the room so fast that almost no one could even tell how she'd traversed it, and everyone in Gryffindor was suddenly looking for their friends. The three who'd already noticed their missing friends, however, ran after their Head of House at once. When they caught up to McGonagall, she was gazing at a curious scene, with an expression somewhere between sadness and pride.

In the middle of the hallway stood Neville Longbottom, wand in hand, with his arms spread and his back straight and his expression set, as if to say,  _if you want my friends, you'll have to go through me first_. He was, of course, Petrified. He would probably, when he awoke, be disappointed to find that his friends had not fared much better; though they had obeyed what was probably a very insistent order to run away, Dean Thomas and Lavender Brown were barely twenty feet distant, frozen in the act of glancing over their shoulders as they ran.

Parvati made very quiet, high-pitched, distressed sound, like a mouse under the eye of a Kneazle. Ron swore, and McGonagall glanced disapprovingly in his general direction. He winced. "Sorry, Professor."

"Do you," asked Professor McGonagall, frowning at the three Petrified students as if they might unfreeze and answer her questions if only she glared at them sternly enough, "know what your friends were doing, perhaps twenty minutes ago?"

"Um, they were in the library," said Seamus. "Looking up if there's any way to force a ghost to talk to you."

Professor McGonagall's frown deepened. "May I ask why they were doing that, Mr. Finnegan?"

Padma Patil materialized at something approaching a sprint, ignored all the other Gryffindors, came to a surprisingly dignified halt, and hugged her sister. Terry Boot, looking slightly mystified, skidded around the corner in her wake a moment later, and made a sort of confused, apologetic gesture at the Gryffindors, who were all staring at him as he slid to a much less dignified halt. Parvati, meanwhile, struggled not to cry - crying, of course, was undignified - and mostly did not succeed. Padma stroked her sister's hair and made soothing noises ( _shh shh, Kali, it's okay_ ). Ron, who had never seen Parvati lose her composure like this, gave them a slightly alarmed look as Seamus attempted to answer McGonagall's question. "Um, we, um, we wanted to figure out what killed Moaning Myrtle but she won't talk to us," he explained. "Apparently she's ... really upset about the little Ravenclaw girl that got gotten during the Quidditch game?"

Professor McGonagall peered at Ron and Seamus. "No such spell exists," she said, "but if it did, I would advise you regardless to abandon that line of inquiry. Myrtle Warren has never been able to report anything useful about the circumstances of her death." She sniffed irritably, as if the idea of failing to derive useful tactical information from a traumatic event had personally offended her, and then changed the subject. "How long ago would you say you most recently talked to your friends, Mr. Finnegan?"

"Um, maybe an hour ago?" hazarded Seamus. "Not a  _long_ time."

"Long enough," said Ron darkly. "Anybody could get anywhere in the castle, in an hour, if they knew where they were going."

"Oh," said Seamus, wilting, as Professor McGonagall nodded. "But, I mean, at this point it's pretty obvious, isn't it?"

"Why's that?" asked Terry Boot curiously. He kept glancing concernedly at the Patil twins, and was standing awkwardly apart from the Gryffindors whose friends had just been Petrified, but he was sort of listening. If nothing else, he wanted to be able to report a vague summary of the conversation to Padma later, since she was not presently paying any attention to anyone other than Parvati but would probably want to know.

Seamus shrugged at Terry as McGonagall Conjured floating stretchers and began to levitate the three Petrified students onto them. "Look at the people that've got attacked so far," he explained. "The twins, Percy's girlfriend and one of Ginny's friends, now Ron's friends. Except for Malfoy and Finch-Fletchley, and that's  _obviously_  just meant to throw us off or maybe a mistake, they're all Weasleys or friends-of-Weasleys." He looked at McGonagall. "I mean, seriously, can't you just have Lucius Malfoy arrested?"

"Alas," sighed Professor McGonagall, stalking in the general direction of the hospital wing with three of her students in tow, "no."

* * *

Parvati Patil spent the next several weeks completely unwilling to get more than three feet away from her twin sister. Since they didn't have electives yet, this was thankfully not any more complicated than both of them taking it in turns to attend classes with the Ravenclaws and the Gryffindors; all the classes were technically the same. Professor Snape initially objected to this behavior, protesting that it was extremely inconvenient and they shouldn't get special privileges just because Parvati's best friend had been temporarily indisposed, but he was eventually shouted down by McGonagall and Flitwick. They had seen the angry red marks Padma was patiently accumulating on her arms, from Parvati clinging to her with her sharp painted nails.

The Animagus project was postponed until Neville, Lavender, and Dean could be revived. Partly because it seemed unfair and dangerous to leave them out of it, but also partly because no one was quite sure whether they ought to tell Padma, and she was  _always_ around now. In the meantime Ron, Seamus, and Parvati took intensive notes in class, to make sure their friends would be able to catch up on their schoolwork. (Padma, whose notes were  _always_ thorough to the point of excess, gave them pointers on doing this effective.) And of course they practiced. And practiced. And slept, occasionally. (And practiced more.)

Padma found herself watching with moderate fascination as Seamus and Parvati took it in turns to fling various jinxes and hexes at Ron's increasingly functional Shield Charm. "Where did you  _learn_ all these?" she asked when Parvati used the  _fifth_ jinx she'd never heard of, and then, a moment later, said, "Wow, I thought you hated books."

Seamus gave them a strange look. "Did you just - "

"What?" asked Padma, frowning at him.

Parvati said, "Maya, that is very rude, don't insult my friends," and then  _Padma_ looked confused.

"I didn't - "

" _Oh my God_ _you guys are telepathic_ ," said Seamus, completely distracted from the task at hand.

Ron dropped his shield - he couldn't maintain it at any strength without blocking out sound for himself - and said, "What's happening?"

"We're  _what_?" said Parvati.

"You're  _totally_ talking to each other without saying stuff out loud," said Seamus.

" _What_?" said Padma.

Ron tilted his head at them, puzzled. "You're magic twins," he said. "Isn't that a thing? I thought that was a thing."

"No, that's a  _myth_ ," said Padma, somewhat shrilly. "Magic twins just tend to  _think_ alike so they can  _pretend_ to be able to mindtalk to each other, people do it all the time, your  _brothers_ do it  _all the time_ , but they can't really -  _ow,_  Kali," she interrupted herself, giving her sister an annoyed look. Parvati, somewhat effortfully, pried her fingers off of Padma's wrist, and pouted. "Honestly," sighed Padma, settling a hand on Parvati's shoulder. "Don't be ridiculous, Finnegan."

Ron - inside Padma's field of view, but completely out of Parvati's sight - pulled an inkwell from his bookbag and made as if to throw it at Parvati's head.

Parvati flinched and ducked, causing Padma to hug her again and glare at Ron.

"That," said Seamus, eyes wide, "is  _uncanny_."

"It's terrifying," snapped Padma, "thank you  _very_  much."

"Um," said Ron, scratching his head uncomfortably, "I'm sorry? It made the point, though."

Padma sighed. He had a point. And, apparently, she and Parvati had spontaneously developed  _actual twin telepathy._ "This is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me," she admitted.

"Hogwarts is like that," said Seamus sympathetically.

 _Kali,_  thought Padma,  _can you hear me_?

"Of course I can hear you, you're literally right there," said Parvati.

 _Merlin all-seeing._ Was this the price of hanging out with Gryffindors? The world suddenly  _ceasing to make any sense_? Padma sighed, and in Ron's general direction, said, "I suddenly cannot possibly overstate how much I would like to talk to your brothers." She paused, and then added, thoughtfully, "Although actually, we should maybe first talk to  _Professor Flitwick_."

So the practice session was adjourned early, and Ron and Seamus trailed puzzledly after them, watchful and quiet, as Parvati and Padma walked towards the Charms classroom, holding hands and practicing communing without speaking aloud. This mostly sounded like them occasionally saying completely disconnected words or occasionally phrases, and a lot of Padma complaining of the insanity of Gryffindors. "It's actually really hard to tell the difference between this and normal talking," reported Parvati after a few minutes. "I mean, I can tell whether  _I'm_ talking out loud but it  _sounds_ the same either way."

"This is seriously a  _new_ thing?" said Ron curiously. "Like, you couldn't do this before?"

"No, this absurd phenomenon is completely new," said Padma. "Until half an hour ago I was  _certain_ twin telepathy was just a particularly persistent myth."

"Do you think," wondered Seamus, looking at Ron, "that your brothers are  _actually_  telepathic?"

Ron made a considering face, hunting through his memories for evidence of this. Seamus had to grab him rather hastily to stop him from falling down a staircase when, several minutes later, he was still thinking about it. "I am not  _sure,_ " said Ron, eventually, "that there's actually anything they've done that you couldn't explain by them thinking really alike? But if they're faking, they do it convincingly enough that I always assumed that magical twins are  _normally_  telepathic."

"Does it go away if you get too far away from each other?" wondered Seamus. "You're in different Houses."

"Wouldn't they have noticed when they were little, though?" pointed out Ron. "They only just got  _Sorted_ a year and a half ago."

"Probably not, actually," said Padma, shaking her head rather distractedly. "Our house is pretty big and we never had the same hobbies."

Then they had arrived at the office adjacent to the Charms classroom, where Professor Flitwick, the Head of Ravenclaw House, was humming to himself and grading papers.

Professor Flitwick, once the situation had been explained rather haltingly to him, favored the twins with an expression of total astonishment. " _Really_?" he squeaked. "You've developed  _genuine_ twin telepathy? That's  _fascinating!_ "

"It's, um, it's sort of terrifying, actually," said Padma, fidgeting with the nails of her right hand (shorter than Parvati's, but no less meticulously painted). She clearly would have been wringing her hands, if not for Parvati still clinging to her left one.

Flitwick wilted slightly, but only slightly. "Oh, but you could learn so much," he enthused, practically hopping up and down on his desk. "We must do experiments!"

* * *

April 19, 1993

> _My dear grandniece,_
> 
> _You will perhaps be interested to know that Lucius Malfoy has kidnapped your Muggles and is threatening to kill them unless Theodore claims responsibility for the Petrifaction of the young Malfoy heir._   _This implies, of course, that you and Theodore were able to act so convincingly over the winter holiday that Lord Malfoy, consummate weasel, believes Theodore would find your distress over the loss of an adored pet to be moving. You as well as Theodore will be rewarded for your success._
> 
> _I plan to_   _kill your Muggles before Lucius learns anything dangerous from them; I suspect it will take him some time to realize they contain information and presumably speak English, but the idea will not escape him forever._   _It will take entirely too long for an owl to return, and I must know if they contain any information that you do not have and might expect to require (for instance, do you have access to any money they might have?). Write on the back of this page, which carries a Protean Charm._
> 
> _For your reward, perhaps you would like a less inconvenient pet?_
> 
> _J. Nott_

* * *

April 22, 1993

> (scrawled hastily on the back of the same page)
> 
> _Please don't kill them, let my reward be that you not kill them, please please_
> 
> _I don't know how to get into their bank accounts (why would I know that? I'm thirteen?)_
> 
> _They don't even know Durmstrang is a magic school, what could they POSSIBLY know that's so dangerous?_
> 
> _Obliviate them and send them to Australia if they're such a security risk but please please please don't kill them_
> 
> _Hermione_


	12. Air Pressure

_Morning, April 22, 1992. Durmstrang Institute._

Hermione was folding a piece of parchment into her pocket, hands shaking slightly, as she sat down at the breakfast table, a few minutes behind her roommates. Her face was red and her eyes shiny; she had clearly been crying no more than a few minutes ago.

"What - " began Jarek sharply, and was immediately shushed by Adriana, who interrupted him with a fluttering handwave.

Hermione ignored this interaction completely. "How long," she asked, looking at Viktor, "does it take to fly to England?"

Viktor blinked several times, and glanced at Natalia for help. She shrugged helplessly, and he asked, "Ah - on a  _broomstick_  or for an  _owl_?"

"Either," said Hermione at once. Almost unconsciously, she pulled anxiously at the sleeve of her jumper, twisting the knitted fabric between her fingers, and corrected herself. "Both."

"Owl transit to England from here is probably around a three-week round trip for a slow owl," offered Viktor, looking puzzled and slightly alarmed. "As short as a week with a good one. On a good broomstick  _I_  could fly there in perhaps a day, although most people might take two. Why?"

"My - pet Muggles," explained Hermione, her voice hitching strangely, "have been kidnapped, in an attempt to convince my cousin to admit guilt for a crime I am  _moderately_  certain he did not actually commit."

"You have  _pet Muggles_?" gasped Viktor, in tones of total horror.

Natalia failed, badly, to stifle a giggle.

* * *

_Morning, April 21, 1992. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

Ron and Seamus quickly got bored of watching the Patil twins do experiments with Professor Flitwick, but they were unwilling to leave them alone. Two was less than three, and three, it seemed, was not enough to be safe. So they settled just outside the door, watchful guards, and practiced hitting paper airplanes with hexes. Ron could put out a lot of power for his age but had poor aim; Seamus was an excellent shot but still had a lot of trouble casting all but very simple dueling spells.

Parvati and Padma, meanwhile, proved able to communicate silently at a distance of several dozen yards. Professor Flitwick wanted to try more, but Parvati refused to get out of sight of her sister, and Padma wasn't particularly inclined to argue. Parvati had scurried back across the room at  _remarkable_ speed, when they were done, to cling again to her sister's arm. "Perhaps," Padma offered apologetically, patting Parvati's hand reassuringly, "we can try more experiments once Lavender is un-Petrified?"

"Well, all right," said Professor Flitwick, gathering up his pages of fascinated notes and hopping from one foot to the other. "But you  _will_ tell me at  _once_ if you notice any signs of decay in the ability, won't you, Miss Patil? We could learn so much!"

"Of course, Professor," soothed Padma. "I will. I think we'll go now - the boys are being very patient, but I don't want to take up their entire study period."

They made it about ten steps from the Charms classroom door before Seamus burst out, "How could you  _not know_ you were  _telepathic_?"

"We  _weren't_ ," protested Parvati, quite determinedly. "This is  _new_. I  _swear_."

"We'd have noticed," agreed Padma. "The working hypothesis is that we've just never spent so much time in physical contact before."

Ron made a puzzled, thinking face. "I'm trying to remember," he explained, when Parvati shot him an inquiring look, "whether Fred and George do anything like that, or they're just - sort of constantly  _nearby_  each other?" He glanced at where Parvati was still clinging to her sister. "I mean, boys don't really hold hands."

"That's silly," opined Parvati, and Seamus shrugged.

"I'm going to be extremely annoyed if I can't find anything in the library about this," grumbled Padma, as they paced up the stairs. Ron and Seamus still had their wands out. This was, in Padma's opinion, extremely tacky behavior - keeping one's wand drawn was a sign of underconfidence in one's own draw time - but all things considered, she didn't think now was really the time to comment. "Magical twins are  _really_  rare, though. It's some kind of astronomical coincidence that there's two sets of us at Hogwarts at once."

"We'll help you look," said Seamus brightly.

 _You have good friends,_  thought Padma, and Parvati grinned at her.

* * *

_Midnight, April 20, 1992. Malfoy Manor._

Somewhere underground, there was a dungeon.

"I thought," said Doctor Jean Granger, running a hand through his neat dark braids in search of head injuries, "that there were no longer such things in the world as  _dungeons_." In French, of course, as his wife or daughter would understand him and he was not at this time certain that he wanted to be talking to anyone else. He didn't think he was injured, but he also felt like he'd been unconscious for some time, so he was feeling kind of unsettled.

"Yes, well," said his wife Doctor Emily Granger, also in French, from approximately two feet away, "so did I, and here we are." And indeed here they were, suddenly, in a room which appeared to consist principally of cold stone floors, the faint sharp smell of metal, and an extremely tiny line of faint light which was presumably a light source some distance beyond a heavy, well-fitted door.

Jean did not feel as though it would be wise to leap dramatically to his feet, so he instead just reached out sort of blindly, slowly in the dark, towards her voice. His long fingers promptly found themselves tangled in her cloud of hair, which on the whole he thought was probably all right. "I don't suppose  _you_  know what's happened," he inquired, squinting into the darkness in hopes of adjusting. There was technically  _some_ light, so he didn't think this was a totally lost cause.

"I  _think_ ," offered Emily, in the same language, gently untangling his fingers from her hair and then holding his hand, "that we have been attacked by a wizard."

"Um," said Jean. "And you think this because ... ?"

"Well, I heard you collapse unexpectedly and then a strange man in a cloak pointed a stick at me and said something that wasn't English, and then I woke up here," explained Emily. "It seemed reasonable to assume he was a wizard."

That did seem reasonable. "I see."

"I do not know  _why_  we have been attacked by a wizard," added Emily, "except that I suppose it is probably something to do with Hermione."

"She is in Germany," pointed out Jean. Emily's interest in their daughter's education began and ended with 'she should get good grades and not die of troll attacks'; once Hermione had been suitably repentant and chosen a nice  _normal_  boarding school, she had completely stopped paying attention again. Jean, if he was honest with himself, really wasn't paying much  _more_ attention, but he was proud of himself for having remembered  _where_ Headmaster whatshisface had told them the school was. Nice man, that one, very respectable, nothing like that ridiculous Dumbledore fellow from the magic school. He'd turned up in a proper suit and spoken very sensibly about competitive curricula and small class sizes and so forth.

"Ah, right." Emily sighed. "I suppose it could have been a  _German_  wizard. I didn't get a very good look at him, unfortunately. Do you suppose she might be in danger?"

Jean considered that. "Wizards," he said after a moment, "don't really seem to consider us to be  _people._ " Deputy Headmistress McGonagall had threatened to hex them when they decided to take Hermione away from Hogwarts. Even Dumbledore, who insisted that they were within their rights as parents and had  _pleaded_ with them not to take Hermione away, had looked at them the entire time as if they were stupid children. And according to Hermione, those were the  _nice_ wizards. "If they were after Hermione and had already got her, I don't think they'd bother with us at all."

"True. And it seems unlikely," pointed out Emily, "that either of us might somehow have  _personally_  offended a wizard, doesn't it? Not without noticing."

This was fair. "So we're probably here for some Hermione-related reason that  _isn't_ that they've already captured her or hurt her," concluded Jean, "I mean - I struggle to imagine a  _reason_  anyone might need to blackmail a thirteen-year-old, but - "

"I suddenly feel as if I should have been paying more attention when Hermione tried to explain that leaving that awful school was somehow dangerous," sighed Emily. "Is there any way for us to contact them and demand to know what's going on, do you think?" At Jean's raised eyebrow, she added, "I mean, if we  _weren't_  in a ridiculous medieval dungeon. Obviously we cannot currently contact anyone. But I'm just thinking, I mean, I don't imagine they've got a  _telephone_ , do you?"

"I see your point," agreed Jean. "I think we should probably focus on the part where we are in a ridiculous medieval dungeon, though."

"Right, true," said Emily. "Does that door look to you as if it has a lock? Or even a doorknob?"

"It does not," frowned Jean, squinting at it. "I suppose it is probably a magic door." He paused. "Do you suppose it's actually likely that our captors don't speak French?" Many English people spoke at least some French, and Jean wasn't sure, having never visited Germany, but suspected this might also be true of Germans. Still, there was at least  _some_ chance their captors were xenophobic or, in his opinion more likely, poorly educated; they  _might_ not be able to understand.

"It's at least probably more likely than them  _being_  French," agreed Emily, shrugging. "I suppose in this situation it is potentially useful that I genuinely have no idea where exactly Hermione's normal school actually  _is_. I don't even remember what it was called, do you?"

"I do not," said Jean, laughing a little bitterly. "A-plus in neglectful parenting for us. I do hope a bunch of ordinary German children aren't about to be murdered on our family's account. Hogwarts should not have been delegating 'protecting children' to their prefects, but they at least  _had_ prefects who were capable of defending children from enormous magical monsters. I expect Hermione's new school, whatever it is called, does not."

Emily sighed in agreement, and looked at the door. "I'm quite hungry," she observed. "How long do you suppose we were unconscious?"

* * *

_Afternoon, April 22, 1992. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

They'd been in the library for about an hour and a half, and finished all their homework but made absolutely no progress on the magical twin research front, when they were interrupted. Seamus, more alert and less personally invested in the research, was the first to look up, eyebrows rising. Ron and the twins followed his gaze curiously a moment later, towards where the doors had opened rather dramatically.

Professor Sprout swept into the library, right past a startled Madam Pince. Her gently swirling trail of leaves and flower petals and dirt, typically so cheery and soothing, seemed unusually agitated. Madam Pince opened her mouth to object, but was interrupted. Students were already looking up in surprise at her presence, but everyone's heads jerked out of their books as Sprout shouted. " **EVERYONE RETURN TO YOUR COMMON ROOMS AT ONCE** ," she roared, in a clear, sharp, dangerous voice better suited to some sort of dragon than to the plant-encrusted Head of House Hufflepuff.

There was a sudden loud scramble, throughout the library, to gather up parchment and textbooks. Several students actually vaulted tables to get out of the room as quickly as possible.

"Why?" yelled Ron, over the commotion."What's happened?"

Professor Sprout turned and looked at him, and at a hundred yards Ron could see the worried sympathy in her expression. She wasn't just sad about something going wrong, he realized - she was sad  _about him in particular_. The Herbology professor's voice was much quieter, when she spoke again, but it cut through the noise effortlessly anyway. "A student is missing," she said.

Ron stared for about three seconds, confused, and then it hit him like an oncoming train.

Strangely disconnected from his consciousness, he heard his own voice say softly, " _Oh no._ "

Seamus echoed him, "Oh  _no,_ " and scrambled to pick up all their books and work.

Parvati made a  _hmmm_  noise - Ron could see her tilting her head thoughtfully at him, in his peripheral vision - and Padma flinched visibly, as if someone had threatened her with a knife. "Um," began Parvati.

"D _o not go do something Gryffindor,_ " Padma shrilled, waving her hands frantically, interrupting her sister before she could begin a sentence. "We are not doing that please do not do that I  _do not want to fight the Heir of Slytherin_  - "

"No, of course we're not," said Ron. His voice sounded strange to his own ears, hollow and flat. "Parvati, go ahead and go to Ravenclaw, we'll tell McGonagall when she takes attendance, she'll understand."

He wasn't really sure what Parvati and Padma were so concerned about. He didn't know who the Heir of Slytherin was, or where he might find them; there was nothing he could actually _do._  He was going to go obediently back to the Gryffindor common room and sit down and think, and pray that Ginny was there to worry with him, and  _think_. Professor Sprout would not be looking at him like that if it wasn't that someone he loved had been attacked, he knew. And with so many already in the hospital wing - Neville, Dean, Lavender, Fred and George - there were really only two options.

 _Let it be Percy_ , he pleaded silently, as they ran up the stairs, dodging taller students without trying to get too far away from the mass. Parvati and Padma split in the opposite direction when they reached the seventh floor, heading for Ravenclaw Tower with the rest of the students wearing blue scarves and badges and hats. Parvati mouthed  _don't do anything stupid_  at him as he and Seamus ran towards Gryffindor.

 _Let it be Percy who's missing,_  thought Ron. _Percy can defend himself, he'd be okay if he got kidnapped or something. The Heir is probably a student and maybe not even Diggory could outfight Percy, not in a real fight, not after all that time he spends at duelling club keeping order, not after all that time he spent last summer memorizing every book of curses he could get his hands on. Ginny's eleven and she's been so ill lately and -_

_Please, please, let it be Percy._

* * *

_Morning, April 22, 1992. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

Theodore Nott  _immediately_  went to find a prefect, when he heard the news.

"I need you to keep track of me," he told the Burke girl who was this year's fifth-year prefect, "and  _swear_ you'll tell anybody who asks the truth when they ask if you've seen me."

"Um," she said. "Nott, what?"

"Lord Malfoy thinks I'm the Heir of Slytherin," he explained, "and I'm  _not_ and I need it to be  _really obvious_ to everyone that I  _cannot possibly_  be responsible for this."

She squinted at him. "The Weasel girl's  _already_  gone," she pointed out, "I don't  _know_ you didn't do it."

"I haven't even left the common room for  _breakfast_ yet, I've been here since  _dinnertime yesterday_ ," he said despairingly. "Ask  _anyone_  who doesn't have a grudge. You're  _responsible_  and I need someone to back me up!"

"You owe me if I have to testify for you against  _Malfoy,_ " she said, stabbing him pointedly in the chest with a finger. "And you  _better_ not be lying."

Theo flopped dramatically into an armchair and threw up his hands. "I don't even know  _how_ to petrify people!"

* * *

_Morning, April 22, 1992. Durmstrang Institute._

"Argh," said Hermione, dropping her head to the table in despair. She had tried so hard to keep herself and her parents safe, and this was the result.  _She_  would be fine, of course, maybe, for a little while. Maybe. If she was  _lucky,_  and she kept being  _good_ and  _useful_  and deserving of  _rewards_  from her murderous adopted patriarch. But her parents were going to die, and it was going to be her fault. It would have been her fault, still, if they had been killed by some bored wizard for no particular reason, or killed by some racist asshole for daring to produce a Muggleborn - her fault for not protecting them - but it wouldn't  _hurt_ like this did, like knowing she had  _made this happen_  through her own inadequacy. "Why is this happening to me?" she mumbled.

"Want we should fly to England, Dravya?" inquired Adriana, petting her hair soothingly. Her little circle of Eastern European friends had gone through a number of proposed nicknames, Hermione's actual English name being somewhat difficult for everyone to pronounce, and eventually settled on something that didn't actually resemble her name at all. She didn't mind, though she preferred to call them all by their proper names; they all said  _little Dravya_  with such affection that Hermione could not quite muster any indignation. It didn't even really mean anything; Natalia had come up with it while trying nicknamelike variations on words describing Hermione's hair. (Hermione had vetoed anyone calling her  _Fluffy_.) "We can rescue them, maybe?"

"You have  _pet Muggles?_ " repeated Viktor, insistently. "That's  _barbaric_ , what is  _wrong_ with you?"

"I am so bad at flying, I will fall off my broom and die, there is no way I can fight Lucius Malfoy, he probably has  _bodyguards_ , what would I even  _do_ , I can't just send them home my uncle will kill them," Hermione paused, because she'd actually completely run out of air, and took a strained, shallow breath, and registered her friend's moral complaint. Which was legitimate, given that he didn't know what was going on. "Viktor, I'm sorry," she said, and then, all in a rush, "I know, it's horrible, but I  _had_ to, they'd have been killed, I had to say  _yes yes they are my pets I love them they are cute let me keep them pretty please_ or they would have been  _horribly murdered,_ I couldn't just let them  _die_ \- "

"Sshhhh," said Adriana. "Deep breaths."

"You can get  _more_ ," muttered Natalia, like Hermione's parents were goldfish.

Jarek elbowed her. "Have a heart, Nasya, how would  _you_  feel if someone kidnapped your cat and threatened to kill her?"

Natalia winced, and Adriana asked, "Do you know where to find them?"

Hermione considered that.  _Did_ she know how to find Malfoy Manor? It was magically warded, of course, but being a witch she'd presumably be able to see it even if she walked up to it from the nearest Muggle street, so they could fly there, in theory. She'd  _been_ there only a few months previously, in fact, but they'd traveled by Floo, which didn't rely very significantly on actual geography. Which was a shame, since she'd spent a whole two weeks last summer absorbing the required information to pass a GCSE in geography. But she was  _Hermione Granger,_ damn it, she remembered everything, someone must have said something like -

 _\- the Malfoys of Wiltshire_  -

"Yes, I think so," she said. Her voice only shook a little. Viktor was staring at her with wide, shocked eyes. "I don't - I don't know what I'd  _do_  when I  _got_ there - "

"Hex people until they give you your pets back," suggested Natalia. She paused, and tilted her head thoughtfully. Then she corrected herself. "Actually, wait, no, shield me and let  _me_ hex people until they give you your pets back, that'd be better." Hermione was an excellent duellist, but she tended to win fights with good dodging, excellent shielding, and aiming well with the approximately one offensive spell she typically needed to use per duel. It helped that, being between one and two years younger than everyone in her class, she was a relatively small target.

"I, um, I think I could get arrested for that?" objected Hermione halfheartedly. Although in theory it was illegal to break into people's houses and assault them, and even more illegal in practice to do it to Noble Lords like Lucius Malfoy, it  _was_ also illegal to steal things from people. Hermione's  _parents_ didn't have legal personhood rights, but they were still recognizably living creatures, and  _Hermione_ was a witch, so Malfoy's behavior was approximately equivalent to having stolen her cat, which  _was_ illegal. Plus, even if Hermione's ''great-uncle'' didn't care about  _her,_  he would probably be perfectly interested in using her as a weapon to attack Lord Malfoy. "My uncle would ... probably not let me stay arrested, though."

"Well, there you go then," said Jarek cheerfully. "I suck at flying and have no personal interest in this situation, so I'll stay here and cover for you, and you four can fly to England like crazy people and save Hermione's Muggles. I'll, I dunno, I'll practice ventriloquism and tell the professors you're all ill?"

"Sure," said Adriana, shrugging, "why not. My grades can survive missing a week of classes. Old Lindholm might mark us down for missing Talking Day, but Brewmastery and Life and electives are easy to make up. And Alkaev will give us shit but what do you wanna bet he'd give us  _extra credit_ for flying to England to fight somebody?"

Hermione imagined their dour silver-haired giant of a Battle Magic teacher being told they'd done this.  _Well,_  he might say,  _that was stupid of you. Ten bonus points for not dying. Go do your quick-draw drills._ Yeah, she could see that. "Viktor, Natalia," she said, "you don't have to help me if you don't - "

"You have bad taste in pets but you're still my _friend_ ," interrupted Natalia, looking slightly offended. "Of course I'll help you."

"We fly faster than you," added Viktor drily. "Describe these people, please. I'm sure you can keep pace with Adri - no offense, Adri - "

"None taken," said Adriana, shrugging.

" - but we," he gestured between himself and Natalia, "are going to get there first, if you tell us where we're going."

"Go find us a map of England?" suggested Adriana, nudging Jarek with her shoulder. "You've got a map of England, right?"

Jarek grinned. "I've got maps of  _everything_ ," he asserted gleefully, and got up from the table. "I'll be right back."

Viktor looked back at Hermione, clearly expecting her to answer his other question as well. Hermione made a thoughtful face. "They, um," she said, wondering how to answer that question without saying  _they look like me_.

Then she wondered if there was any  _point_ in trying to keep the secret.

On the one hand, she was pretty sure her friends were evil. Natalia and Viktor had thrown an eleven-year-old boy down the stairs on April Fools' Day, and stomped on his hands in their metal-toed Quidditch shoes because he'd drawn something on the walls. One of Jarek's favorite pastimes was recreational pixie-hunting. Adriana's soft, gentle, affectionate demeanor transmuted abruptly and dramatically into toothy murderous laughter the moment she stepped into a duelling arena. On the other hand, they were still her  _friends_ : they studied with her and reminded her to eat and were happy for her when she did well in class. And here they were, sitting at breakfast with her, offering to fly to England on an minute's notice to rescue her  _pet Muggles._  Muggles they didn't even know were her parents. Muggles, that for most purposes weren't even considered to be people.

(Although ... Viktor clearly thought Muggles were people, and that it was wrong to keep them as pets for this reason. Hermione was maybe not  _surprised_ , exactly, not of Viktor, but ... she wouldn't have  _guessed that_ , not at Durmstrang.)

 _How observant are my friends?_  wondered Hermione, taking long deep slow breaths to cover for the fact that she was taking a long time to answer the question. Jarek was far and away the most aware of his surroundings of the four, and the best with details, but Viktor was a Seeker, he had good eyes; and Adriana was good at putting names to faces, which meant she was decent with faces. Hermione couldn't be  _sure_ they wouldn't take one look at her mother and realize at once that they were related. At which point they would all know she was Muggleborn. They were her friends now, when they thought she was a cute little British girl from a  _wealthy pureblood family_ , but would they stay her friends if it turned out she wasn't? Viktor might; Adriana probably would; Natalia and Jarek might not. At best they would shun her, Hermione suspected.

At worst they would report her to Headmaster Karkarov, and then it wouldn't matter if only  _half_ of her friends were racist.

Was there any  _other_ plausible mechanism for her parents to look like her?

Hm. She maybe had an idea.

"Do any of you know anything about Muggle genetics?" inquired Hermione.

They all stared at her. "About  _what_?" said Natalia, after a moment.

Right then. Quick explanation. "Um, they've got this whole theory about what people are made of, and why they resemble their relatives in various ways," said Hermione. "It talks about how exactly it works that sometimes if your parents have different hair colors you get one and your siblings get the other, and how people  _look_  like their parents and also _act_ like their parents and tend to have similar talents and things."

"I have no idea where you're going with this," said Viktor, frowning. "Are your pet Muggles  _scientists_?"

"Um, no, they're doctors," Hermione said, "I'm getting there, sorry. So the  _reason_  I've got these Muggles is that somebody in the British wizarding community was really jealous of my uncle when he was showing me off. And this guy read a Muggle book once and  _vastly misunderstood_ genetics in a way that led him to believe that if he found two Muggles who  _looked like me_ , and did some magic to steal their genes and put it in his child, he could make another one of me." That was wrong, obviously, but Hermione thought it was a kind of wrong that someone completely uninformed might have plausibly managed to arrive at.

"Um," said Adriana. "That sounds confusing and possibly horrifying?"

"It completely didn't work," Hermione added reassuringly. Because of course it didn't, she was making this all up on the spot. Her web of lies was going to get untenable at some point, but whatever, she needed not to die. "It was sort of weird and confusing what happened exactly, but anyway once he got caught the Muggles were just going to get killed and they  _looked like me_ and I felt like I had to save them, you know? So I convinced everyone I wanted them for pets." The main problem with this story was honestly just that Hermione had  _no idea_ how Lucius Malfoy had even  _known they existed_. If the lie she was spinning had really happened, that would  _completely_  explain why - he could easily have been there, one of the people she had to convince - but in real life her parents had never been anywhere near such a situation.

She supposed that someone had probably tracked her when she went home last summer, or bribed Karkarov for information, or something. And that person had shown up at some pureblood social gathering and tried to  _expose_ her for being a Muggle-lover, to try to discredit the Notts. And then her false family's patriarch had explained calmly to them that this was not an instance of thinking Muggles were  _people,_ oh no, of course not, that would be insanity. His great-niece had  _pet_  Muggles, he would say, she's so very attached to them, and this was merely an amusing affectation he was indulging because she was  _so talented_.

And then Lucius Malfoy had kidnapped them.

"So that's all to explain that they basically look like me," Hermione finished. There. That was an explanation. Now she could lean on the resemblance. "The girl one especially, she looks like she could be my mother with just a bit lighter skin." Which she's totally not. At all. "The other one's darker than me, he wears braids, but he's got the same color eyes as I do."

"Right," said Viktor, eyes narrowed suspiciously. He didn't question this story, but he looked like he wanted to. Natalia, on the other hand, did not seem to care enough to poke holes in Hermione's weird explanation. Jarek had just returned with a notebook full of neatly annotated, hand-drawn maps of the British Isles, and Viktor apparently wasn't suspicious enough not to move on. "Sure," he said. "Where are we going?"

"Wiltshire," said Hermione, "it's a county in the southwest of England," and Jarek obligingly flipped through his book and presented her with a map of the part of England encompassing approximately everything west of Oxford and south of Wales. It had counties marked in different colors of ink - Wiltshire was outlined neatly in green. That probably wasn't a coincidence, that the Malfoys' county was Slytherin green; whatever wizard geography book Jarek had gotten this information from had probably been using the traditional associations of the counties with the colors of local wizarding families. She pointed. "That one."

" ... Uh, that is a pretty large area," said Viktor, frowning concernedly at the scale marker. "Thousands of kilometers?"

"I mean, we can skip all the parts of it that have significant-sized Muggle populations, probably, and Malfoy Manor is not designed to be  _unobtrusive_ ," pointed out Hermione uneasily. "But I've only ever been there by Floo, I don't - I don't know  _exactly_  where it is."

"I can find an approximately arbitrary target in a space that big," offered Natalia. "I've done some search and rescue work with my father, saving people from yetis and cliffs and so forth. But the charms I know for that wide an area only work if the target in question is alive and wants to be found, I don't think a house counts."

 _Only if it wants to be found_. Sure, why not. Sometimes magic was so  _obnoxious_. "I ... um, I imagine my  _Muggles_ want to be found and rescued, does that work?"

"It should," shrugged Natalia. "Assuming they're alive. Works fine on dogs."

Hermione winced, and Adriana patted her on the head again.

This reminded Hermione, as Viktor and Natalia got up, that her hair was its normal floofy self. If she got caught in Malfoy Manor, she was  _dead_ if she looked like Hermione Granger and not Hermione Nott. (She was honestly kind of shocked, and a little bit offended, that  _straightening and dying her hair_ was all it took to make her unrecognizable to her former peers. Well, that and shrinking her front teeth. It was really useful, of course, in that it had probably saved her life and also meant she didn't have to try  _that_ hard to be in disguise. Which was all great. But  _honestly_.)

"Um," she said, "on account of how my uncle may actually kill me if I show up in England looking like this, I think I need to straighten my hair before we go."

Jarek giggled. Viktor and Natalia, already discussing the relative merits of flying gear versus duelling gear for this task, disappeared up the stairs.

Jarek picked up their abandoned bookbags and headed for the kitchens; Hermione and Adriana also went upstairs, to get hair dye. They'd been sitting in the common room for about five minutes, and barely begun straightening Hermione's hair, when Viktor paced back down the stairs from the fifth-year boys' dorm. Natalia returned from the fourth-year girls' dorm a few minutes later.

They were both dressed to fight.

The Durmstrang uniform was black and involved a significant number of layers, so that students could choose however many layers were appropriate to the weather. Most students simply stripped to their lowest layer, short pants and thin shirts, for the practical parts of Battle Magic class, but they were permitted their own choice of attire for when they duelled for grades or competition. Natalia typically dressed for such occasions in the fashion common to those Russian wizards who didn't style themselves nobility, which was Rus pants (loose to the knees, tight around the calves), winingas (no shoes), and a long-sleeved surcoat in solid dark red and silver. Viktor, for his part, preferred an almost Muggle-inspired combination of heavy trousers and heavy boots and a light sleeveless shirt, all in dour black.

Viktor had put on a dragonhide jacket, and Natalia her steel-toed boots, and they were both wearing flying-cloaks, scarves, gloves, and goggles. And, of course, carrying broomsticks. Natalia had two in hand, because Hermione didn't own a broomstick and she'd replaced hers recently enough that the older model was still perfectly serviceable. "Right," said Natalia briskly, tossing her extra broomstick onto a couch next to Hermione. "How will you two find us when you catch up, then?"

"You idiots are going to take  _food_ with you, right?" interrupted Jarek.

"Uh," said Viktor.

They had absolutely not thought of that.

Jarek, who had spent the time they were getting dressed going to the kitchens and asking the house-elves very politely for food for his sick friends, rolled his eyes and handed them each their bookbags, which had been emptied of books and filled with food. "You appreciate me," he said drily.

"We appreciate you," chorused Natalia and Viktor.

"First question stands, though," added Natalia.

"Um, can you teach me your search charm?" asked Hermione. "That'd be the easiest way."

Natalia tilted her head. "Yeah, probably. The basic one is super easy, actually, you just hold your wand like so and say  _point me_ ," she explained, demonstrating. "If you don't specify a target it just points north. If you specify a target who's dead or doesn't want to be found it'll just spin a bit and then point at you. You wanna try twice if it does that, it's  _possible_ for it to actually just be pointing right behind you - oh, I'm going to need to know your Muggles'  _names,_ I think."

Hermione blinked. " _Point me to Hermione's Muggles_  is underspecified, I suppose," she sighed.

"Potentially yes. I can  _try_  it if you don't actually  _know_ their names, but - "

Hermione shook her head. "No, no, I do. Jean and Emily Granger, same last name, they're married."

"Oh, cute, I didn't know Muggles got married. Okay. See you in, like, a day?"

"Something like that." Hermione took a deep breath. "I know this is a lot to ask of you two, so  _thank you_  so much, and also - please, please save them, they are so important to me, I wouldn't ask you to do this if it wasn't really important."

"We'll do our best," Viktor assured her seriously. "Be careful of crossing France, by the way, the geese are unusually vicious and high-flying."

Natalia hugged her, because Natalia was a huggy sort of person, and then they were out the window and gone into the late-morning light.

* * *

_Afternoon, April 22, 1992. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

It wasn't Percy.


	13. Out of the Frying Pan

_Evening, April 22, 1992._

* * *

_Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Gryffindor Tower._

They sat in stony, distressed silence for a number of hours. Despite the crowdedness of the common room, no one bothered the two remaining Weasleys in their corner. Seamus Finnegan and Oliver Wood lurked nearby, playing a silent and unexplosive game of gin rummy with Seamus' deck of Exploding Snap cards. Every so often they looked over at Ron and Percy, and exchanged worried looks, and went back to playing.

Professor McGonagall appeared very briefly, to inform them that dinner would be served in the common room and that no one was to leave.

Percy bolted from his chair and caught her at the entrance-way. "Yes, Mr. Weasley?" inquired Professor McGonagall, eyebrows rising curiously.

"This is a - a test, or something, right?" said Percy, his voice strained. Professor McGonagall stared at him. He struggled to explain. "Headmaster Dumbledore has some, I don't know, some really clever plan and - and we're supposed to have learned our lesson about interfering with his plans, or - I didn't believe you last year when you said everything was fine and I  _should have,_ I know," Percy stopped to breathe, briefly cutting off the stream of stammered words, "but I really need to know, I just - please don't let us sit here and worry if -  _please,_ Professor, just tell me - "

"This is not a test," murmured Professor McGonagall, her voice steady despite the tears gathering around her eyes, "it is not fine, and there is no plan, Mr. Weasley."

She shut the portrait quietly behind her, and Percy stood stock-still for several minutes.

Eventually, he drifted back to his seat and collapsing onto a couch next to Ron. A few minutes later, food appeared on the tables, and Gryffindor House ate their dinner quietly, on armchairs and couches and patches of floor. Seamus and Oliver made sure that the Weasleys ate, because they didn't move to get food themselves.

No one asked Percy or Ron what they were thinking about, in their silent stillness.

A little while after dinner, Percy Weasley stood up very abruptly. With Ron's alarmed gaze following him, he stalked purposefully across the room and addressed a tiny dark-haired first-year girl who was currently huddling in a corner, tear-streaked and surrounded by a small gaggle of confused children. They all yelped and scrambled out of Percy's way as he approached. He ignored this behavior utterly and said, "You're Demelza Robbins, right?"

"Y-yes," said the little girl, hugging her knees tightly. "I'm  _sorry_ , prefect Weasley, I am, I, I don't know why  _Ginny and Luna_ instead of me and Colin, they're my friends but I wasn't  _there_ , I don't know what's going on, I really don't  _-_ "

"It's not your fault," Percy told her, in a very flat voice which contained no actual sympathy. She winced, and so did several nearby students. Colin Creevey opened his mouth to say something, probably something defensive, and one of the other first-year girls shushed him rather anxiously. Percy continued, ignoring this, "But I think you  _must_ know _something_ that can help me." He frowned at her, thoughtfully. "You were friends with Luna Lovegood as well as with my sister. What was she saying about the Chamber of Secrets, before she was attacked, do you recall? Everyone was ignoring her, and I rather suspect that we should not have been."

Demelza's eyes were wide and round and terrified, but she tried to answer anyway. "Um, um," she stammered. "She, um, right after she got caught in the library, I think, she was saying - something about a ghost - and Ginny, um, Ginny kept telling her to shut up and, and to stop making up stories - "

" _What_ about a ghost?" pressed Percy. " _Which_  ghost?"

There was a pause, as Demelza shut her eyes and pressed the palms of her hands into them, clearly trying desperately to remember. "I don't know - let me think - I can't remember the name Luna kept saying, I'm sorry - um, there's, is there a ghost who lives in a bathroom? She - "

"Moaning Myrtle!" volunteered Angelina Johnson, from a fair distance across the room. Her interruption made Demelza startle visibly. "She haunts the second-floor girls' bathroom."

"That is the strangest place for a ghost I have ever heard," observed Percy.

"I  _know_ , right?" said Angelina.

Percy looked back at his little sister's best friend. He made a conscious, visible effort to speak gently. "What about her, Demelza?"

"Um," said Demelza somewhat helplessly. "I - I think Luna was trying to convince us that that's  _where_ the Chamber of Secrets is, for, um, for some reason?"

Percy stared at her. "Luna Lovegood was trying to convince you that the Chamber of Secrets is in  _the second-floor girls' bathroom_."

"Um ... yes? I think so?"

The common room was strangely quiet, for a moment, as everyone stared at Percy Weasley, wondering what he'd do.

Eventually he said, with a sort of resigned sigh, "Sure.  _Sure_. Why not. Stupider things have happened. I don't suppose she told you what absurd imaginary creature she thought the Monster of Slytherin might be?"

Demelza thought about that. "I ... I think she said it was a basilisk?" she offered after a moment. Percy blinked, taken aback.

"A what?" said Katie Bell, who had never taken Care of Magical Creatures.

"Those're a real thing, actually," explained Percy, bemused. "They've been extinct for centuries, but they did technically exist. Big snakes. They don't Petrify people, though, they just kill them. I don't think it can possibly have been that."

Demelza shrugged helplessly. "I'm sorry?"

"Still not your fault," repeated Percy. "Right, I'm going downstairs. Nobody's coming with me."

"I'm coming with you," corrected Ron, firmly.

There were a few muted gasps, from the people who'd been paying attention at the end of last year, when Prefect Weasley had hexed a first-year for standing up to him.

Percy made a frustrated noise as he strode towards the portrait hole. "Ron - "

" _She's my sister too,_ " snapped Ron, angrily, which was the first strong emotion he had exhibited all day.

Percy paused, and stared at his little brother for a long moment. He was clearly contemplating how he could possibly argue that point, and eventually he just didn't. "Yeah," he said, "yeah, that's - all right. Let's go."

They were out of the common room a moment later, Gryffindor House staring after them.

* * *

_Somewhere in the airspace above Germany._

Hermione and Adriana had left about an hour after Viktor and Natalia; Hermione's hair was duly straightened and dyed to make her look like a Nott, which fortunately didn't take as long as it did for Hermione to do by herself. Jarek sent them with food as well, and his map-book, and Adriana had somehow managed to talk Viktor's roommate into letting them borrow two pairs of flying-goggles without explaining why.

The Notts' preferred style of duelling attire was reminiscent of old English knights - long-sleeved short tunic, trousers, boots, and long cavalry-style surcoat, all in black with a purple crescent moon emblazoned on the front. Hermione still felt a bit ridiculous in the outfit, despite having had it for nearly a year, but it  _was_ designed for fighting and she might as well look as convincingly pureblood as possible while she was breaking into Malfoy Manor to rescue a pair of Muggles. Adriana, however, had chosen not to wear her duelling outfit. She liked to duel in a flashy skirt of braids and beads, showing off her developing hips, and a shirt composed entirely of a very long, tightly wrapped scarf, which was really  _not_ ideal for this situation. She wore her duelling boots, but with her warmest stockings and most of the layers of her ordinary uniform (minus only the heavy fur-lined over-robe, which would be hard to run in).

Late in the evening, somewhere over what Hermione was reasonably certain was Germany, Adriana yelled over the wind, "So what does this guy think your cousin did?"

"Attacked his son, I think!" Hermione yelled back. "Dunno why, I'm pretty sure they're friends!"

"What happened?"

Hermione was glad she'd sat through broomstick lessons despite hating them. She wasn't about to try playing Quidditch, but she was at least capable of riding a broom in an approximately straight line, at a reasonable clip, without falling off. She was keeping pace okay with Adriana, who had had more practice but was if possible even  _less_ broomstick-inclined than Hermione.

"No idea!" she replied, which was basically true. She had gotten the memo that Draco had gotten attacked by Slytherin's Monster, but that had been  _months_ ago, so something else had to have happened, and she had no idea what. "My uncle wasn't very informative!"

"Is he usually?" yelled Adriana.

"No!"

"That sucks!"

* * *

_Malfoy Manor Dungeons._

They'd tried to break the door. They'd tried to disassemble the door. They'd checked every inch of the walls for weak points. They'd yelled until their voices were hoarse. They'd tried making up random possible passwords in various languages in hopes of getting the door open.

They'd run out of ideas almost an entire day ago, if their collective sense of time was even slightly accurate. There was no way to be sure, really, because the light didn't change and there was no external sound. They were just trapped in this mostly-dark square stone room. At one point a large bowl of water and a smaller bowl full of bread had simply materialized on the floor, by which point they were much too hungry to worry about poison. They hadn't immediately dropped dead, so the food probably wasn't poisonous.

"Magical dungeon security is  _ridiculously_  good," complained Jean on more than one occasion.

"You'd think they'd at least come by at some point and tell us what they  _want_ from us," grumbled Emily, when they'd been there for enough time that, despite carefully rationing the approximately-one-normal-meal's-worth of bread over many hours, they were starting to get very very hungry again. At least they still had water.

It was probably a complete coincidence, but at this particular moment there was the distant sound of a commotion. A very  _brief_ commotion, and the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. Jean and Emily exchanged glances and scrambled to their feet.

About half a minute later, the door clicked open and two strangers strode into the room, shutting it carefully behind them.

The dark-haired boy and the red-haired girl in great black cloaks and scarves, with wands in hand and aviator goggles pushed up on their heads, did not look especially German. They looked Eastern European, actually, and more strangely, they also were obviously  _teenagers_. They might be as old as sixteen, maybe. The boy murmured something, and the room lit with a gentle white glow from the tip of his wand. Under the cloak he seemed to the Grangers to be dressed in a way typical of violent hooligans - heavy combat boots, trousers, and a jacket made of a strange leather-like material. The girl with him was wearing some sort of strange costume, a red dress-coat over poofy pants, with wide sleeves and buttons down the sides instead of the front. Fabric, wrapped around her calves, was visible above the top of her boots.

They were carrying, for some reason, brooms.

"Ah-ha," said the girl, squinting at them. She said something incomprehensible to her companion.

"That sounded like  _Russian_ ," observed Emily, "not German."

"Yes," agreed the boy, nodding. "Ah - hallo? You are Mister und Missus - Granger?"

Emily and Jean exchanged puzzled glances. "Who are  _you_?" asked Jean.

The girl rolled her eyes, but she pointed to herself and said, "Natalia," and then indicated the boy next to her and said, "Viktor."

Viktor added, "Friends of Dravya. Ah, hm." He made a disgruntled face. "Eh - Her-mee-noy-nee?"

Natalia snorted at him, and he said something incomprehensible and sarcastic in her general direction. She rolled her eyes again, and smiled.

" _Hermione_ ," supplied Jean, because it had been close  _enough_  that he thought he recognized what the boy was trying to pronounce.

"Da, yes," nodded the boy at once. "Is difficult to say. Ve," he gestured between himself and the girl, "her friends. Here to help." His English was poor, as if he'd had a few language classes but not  _enough_ of them yet, but he was intelligible.

"Help  _how_ ," demanded Emily, "exactly. And where did you come from? How did she summon you? You're clearly wizards. Are you her friends from Hogwarts?"

Natalia looked considerably offended, and she corrected, "Ve from  _Durmstrang_."

"By flying," added Viktor, indicating the broomsticks they were carrying. "Dravya follows, and friend Adriana. Flying  _fast,_ difficult."

"You know," sighed Jean, "I really don't think there is anything in the standard wisdom about parenting for the situation  _my thirteen-year-old daughter apparently lied to my face about the magicalness of her chosen boarding school in order to literally save my life by sending magical Germans on flying broomsticks to rescue me from an evil dungeon_."

"I am Bulgarian," said Viktor, frowning at him. "Not German. Nasya, Russian."

Jean rolled his eyes. "Sorry, sorry, magical  _Slavics_ on flying broomsticks. Five minutes ago I thought my daughter was going to a perfectly ordinary non-magical school in Germany, give me a break here. Seriously, I feel like I should be mad at Hermione for lying to us but also like I  _really shouldn't?_ "

"We'll have to buy her something nice for her next birthday," suggested Emily. "How _old_ are you two? Fourteen?"

"Four und ten, five und ten," replied Viktor, gesturing at Natalia and then himself. Then he paused. "Er, you say - daughter?" he asked, sounding puzzled. "This means vhat I think, girl-child,  _your_ child?"

"Um," said Jean. "Yes? We're her parents?"

Viktor frowned at them. He said something incomprehensible to Natalia. Natalia clapped her hands to her face and giggled and said something that was almost certainly "Oh  _no_ ," as if she'd just been told something tragically hilarious. Viktor frowned at her, and then suspiciously back at them.

"Vell. Regardless. Must go now, before being found."

"Go  _where_?" demanded Emily.

Viktor shrugged. "Not here."

"How did you even  _get_ down here, aren't there  _guards_ or something?" asked Jean, as he and Emily got up from the floor. Viktor was only just barely Emily's height, and Natalia was shorter; they were definitely young teenagers. "Guards who are not kids?"

Natalia shrugged, and spun her wand in her hand. Viktor said, "Not guards at  _attention_."

" _Durmstrang_ ," repeated Natalia irritably, like this was supposed to mean something to them. She said something else that wasn't English, but which sounded extremely disparaging and contained what was probably a poorly-pronounced version of the word  _Hogwarts_. She retrieved something from her pocket - another wand - and poked the door with it, causing it to swing open again. Viktor extinguished his light, and they headed out into the hallway.

The Doctors Granger followed, because what else were they going to do?

And indeed in the middle of the hallway there were two unconscious adult wizards, great hulks of men in long black robes, collapsed against the walls.

Natalia smirked rather smugly at the looks on the Grangers' faces.

The smirk dropped from her face, however, when another wizard appeared at the end of the hallway.

* * *

_Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Moaning Myrtle's Bathroom._

"This is by far the stupidest thing I have ever done," grumbled Percy, as they stood in the doorway of the second-floor girls' bathroom.

Ron nodded. "Firmly agreed."

They walked inside.

There was an immediate, high-pitched shriek. " _Boys_ aren't  _allowed_  in here!" shrilled the voice of a ghost as she swooped down on them. "What are you  _doing_?"

"Looking," sighed Percy, with obvious awareness of how insane he sounded, "for the Chamber of Secrets."

Myrtle stared at him, eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"Our little sister has been kidnapped and that's probably where she is," supplied Ron. "Also, um, people keep getting Petrified."

"Well,  _I_ can't help you," sniffed Myrtle, and she swept off again, looking miffed for some reason.

Percy sighed. "Look for anything in here that resembles a secret passage, I guess?" he suggested wearily.

This they did.

Approximately an hour later, Ron said, "Hey, this tap's got a snake carved into it."

Turning the faucet did nothing. Poking the pipes also did nothing.

"Guess it's got a password?" supposed Ron. "Um ... death to Mudbloods? Slytherin Rules?"

This also did nothing. Percy tried, after a moment's thought, "Mundanes ad mortem? Um ... Slytherin regis est?"

"Did you just translate my suggestions into Latin?" asked Ron, slightly boggled.

Percy nodded. "I think so. I'm not exactly fluent. I figured, though, if the Chamber of Secrets exists, you know, it was built eight hundred years ago. When Hogwarts classes were all taught in Latin. So the password ought to be in Latin, right?"

They tried various other permutations of stereotypically Slytheriny passwords, and a great many others. The sink stubbornly refused to respond to any of them.

When they'd been standing there for about twenty minutes, Percy said, "Oh, fuck this,  _reducto!_ "

The wall crunched.

It did not crunch very  _much_. A small amount of dust floated to the floor; a very small piece of stone wall was dented.

Percy stared. "You know what?" he said.

"What?" inquired Ron, frowning.

"I can turn a boulder into  _dust_ with that curse," Percy explained. He had been practicing, since the chessboard. "A  _large_ boulder. This wall is charmed."

"Um," said Ron, "aren't  _all_  the walls charmed? We are in a magic castle."

"Good point." Percy turned around and pointed his wand at the opposite wall, and repeated, " _Reducto!_ ", and abruptly the opposing wall had a large hole in it, leading to a nearby hallway. "Extra charmed," he concluded, "because that's still less damage than I can do to a nonmagical object, but not by as much."

Ron blinked, and said, "Huh." He was giving Percy an interesting sort of look - like he was  _impressed_ , maybe. Percy would probably have been really touched by that, if not for the fact that his entire emotional capacity was currently allotted to worrying about Ginny.

Percy aimed his wand back at the wall he'd concluded indeed contained the Chamber of Secrets. " _Reducto! Reducto! Reducto!_ "

He could only take out a very small bit of the wall per spell, and he only had some finite amount of magic, he knew. But it wasn't nothing.

Little by little, he chipped away at the stone.

* * *

_Malfoy Manor Basement_

"Um," said Natalia.

The tall, bald wizard, in his imposing black robes, with his wand pointed at them, peered at her.

Viktor felt a distinct impending sense of doom.

Because there weren't any convenient alternatives, he chose to ignore it.

Instead, he inquired: "Ah, are you Lucius Malfoy?" He suspected he had not pronounced the name quite correctly, it didn't  _sound_ like what Hermione had said, but it was, he hoped, close enough that the British man would understand the question.

The wizard's white eyebrows rose. He looked mildly amused. "I am distinctly not Lucius Malfoy," he replied. Viktor winced a little; he had indeed not pronounced the name correctly. The wizard who was distinctly not Lucius Malfoy inquired, quite politely, "What, pray tell, are you doing with those Muggles?"

"Rescuing them."  _Obviously_ , he didn't say. "They are - " his expression was probably betraying how strongly he opposed this terminology - "stolen property."

"Problem?" challenged Natalia.  _Her_  expression suggested that she didn't care a whit about the personhood rights of Muggles, but nevertheless was in the process of deciding which might be the best curse to use in this situation. Viktor was vaguely, somewhere in the background of his mind, impressed with the degree of loyalty Natalia was showing to their mutual friend. He was sure that his own roommate would not do anything of the kind, if Viktor needed help of this magnitude. Though given the situation, choosing to be loyal might not have been a particularly wise choice. He'd do it again anyway, Hermione was his friend and her Muggles were people who were in danger and and whatever Natalia's motives  _he_ had  _ethics,_ but nevertheless... well, he really hoped that they were not about to be horribly murdered.

The old wizard smiled at them. It made him look significantly more frightening, and Natalia, standing furthest forward, took an almost involuntary step backwards. Viktor did not blame her in the slightest. "They are, in fact,  _my_  stolen property," the old man explained pleasantly. "I am duly appreciative that you have so kindly made my effort to retrieve them more convenient, by removing Lord Malfoy's stunningly incompetent guards. I will, of course, retrieve them to a safe location. You may go."

Natalia frowned at him. Her head turned slightly, enough to speak towards Viktor but not enough to remove the frightening old wizard from her field of view. As she generally did whenever she was anywhere other than Language class, she addressed him in Russian; her English was very poor even after having lived with Hermione for a little over a year. "Didn't Dravya say she couldn't take her Muggles home because her uncle would kill them?" Natalia asked. "Like, he'd defend her having un-stolen her property but he'd think it was inconvenient to let her keep them afterward, that's why she was brainstorming ways to hide them and stuff? Seems like she was talking about this guy, I mean, he's too old to be her  _uncle_ but he could be her great-uncle or something, people say that all the time?"

"Da," agreed Viktor, also frowning darkly. "Um, vith respect, Mr, ah ... " he stalled out almost immediately, realizing he didn't know. This man hadn't actually  _introduced_ himself, all Viktor knew was that his name  _wasn't_ Lucius Malfoy, and Natalia wasn't  _definitely_  right. Or he could be Hermione's uncle through her mother and wouldn't have the same last name. When the confused pause had gone on too long, Viktor just skipped the name he didn't know, and said, "Do you haff ... proof, that these are  _your_ Muggles?"

"They belong to my grand-niece," the old man replied. Right, so this  _was_ her great-uncle.  _Great. Fantastic_.

"Excuse me," said Mr. Granger, "what?"

 _Even better._  "Magic law says you are not people," explained Viktor, sighing. "So: you  _belong_ to Dravya." He had successfully communicated to them that he was talking about Hermione Nott; he wasn't going to bother trying again to pronounce her name when he had a perfectly pronounceable nickname that his friend approved of. Bloody British English and its soft consonants.

"We are not related to this man," objected Mrs. Granger.

"We're  _legally_  not people? What is this, the ninth century?" complained her husband.

Natalia sighed, loudly and dramatically. Viktor rolled his eyes at his friend and addressed the first objection, since he didn't actually have anything for the second. "Madam, you haff been enchanted," he said, as gently as he could manage. Because unless they were  _actually Hermione's parents_ , which he suspected was not impossible but wasn't especially interested in explaining to Natalia, someone had modified their memories to make them think that they were. "Do not trust memory telling you your relatives, please."

"Enchanted?" inquired the man who still hadn't introduced himself but was almost certainly the Nott family patriarch. "How's that, boy?"

Mrs. Granger gave Viktor a truly offended look. "Are you seriously trying to convince me that Hermione is  _not my daughter_  and I only think that because of  _magic_? I assure you that I  _very clearly remember -_ " She stopped suddenly, looking alarmed, because old Nott had made a strange sound that almost resembled  _laughter_. Or at least a sort of cackle. "Um."

Viktor and Natalia exchanged somewhat worried glances.

This caused them to miss Hermione's great-uncle drawing his wand, in a smooth, silent motion that made it seem almost to appear in his hand without effort. He jabbed it in Natalia's general direction. " _Um_  - " said Mrs. Granger, somewhat more urgently, and Natalia turned, saw the wand, and tried to cast a shielding spell. Her reflexes might have saved her, but Nott had just cast a Silencing charm, and the spell failed totally without the incantation; Natalia was an excellent duellist, but she was still only fourteen.

Viktor felt extremely stupid for having let his guard down; he was only halfway through raising his wand when Natalia crumpled to the floor with a completely silent shriek. The nature of her collapse suggested that several or more of her bones were no longer in their preferred shapes.

" _Proteg -_ "

"No," said Nott simply, and Viktor's shield spell failed, too, though it was not immediately apparent how. He had little time to figure it out; a moment later he could feel the sharp, intense pain of his legs ceasing to hold him up, and he was also on the floor. The sense of impending doom had returned, and this time would not be ignored, even through the pain. Nott smiled at him, in exactly the way a wolf might look at a deer whose legs it had just shattered. "Stay for a moment, children," he invited, quite as if they were capable of getting up and leaving; then he was next to the Grangers.

They both tried to bolt, in opposite directions, but he caught them by the shoulders, one in each bony hand, and then all three were gone.


	14. Into the Fire

" _Reducto! Reducto! Reducto!_ "

His Blasting Hex was actually getting weaker, Percy realized, slowly and with some alarm. He'd been casting it, over and over and over, for long minutes, maybe even half an hour, with Ron pacing anxiously behind him and trying (unsuccessfully) to mimic him. At twelve Ron probably didn't quite have the power in him to cast it even once; the renewable but finite well of power available to a wizard grew exponentially with age and physical size. According to Bill, anyway, and Bill had taken an advanced Healing class with Madam Pomfrey in his seventh year, so Percy had no reason not to believe him. Unfortunately, this also meant he was acutely aware of the way his own magical stamina was draining away as he chipped at the wall.

It was  _working_ , though - he'd put a several-meter dent in the stone - and he had nothing else to try.

" _Reducto! Reducto!_ Shit I feel dizzy," said Percy, leaning hard on the nearest intact sink. His vision had gone all wobbly there for a moment, with absolutely no warning; he was honestly proud of himself for not literally falling over. Ron gave him an extremely alarmed look. "It's fine I'll be fine," he insisted, and took a deep breath. "Unless you have any better ideas."

"Um," said Ron, "no ... "

"Right.  _Reducto!_  Fucking hell," gasped Percy. He had never actually experienced well-drain before; it was not common even among very stressed students, because the phenomenon was well-understood and the Hogwarts curriculum was specifically designed to ensure that students were not overtaxed. The regeneration rate was pretty high, he remembered Bill explaining, and faster if you had recently eaten, so you had to be  _really_  trying to actually burn yourself out.

Percy was really trying.

Percy was really really  _really_  trying.

Percy was, around this point, wishing Bill had warned him that doing this to yourself was  _painful_.

"Are you - " began Ron, and then stopped, clearly feeling as though asking  _are you okay_  would be silly.

"Fine," said Percy anyway, "I'm fine, just give me a second here." He slid to the floor, half-controlled, because he was having trouble keeping track of which direction was down. Ron, to his credit, didn't  _say_  anything, but he did look rather obviously at his watch. Ginny had been missing for something like four hours, Percy knew, though he didn't bother to consult his own timepiece. He was slightly too dizzy to successfully read it. "I can do this, I can do this, I'm fine," he insisted, pointing his wand at the wall again from where he was sitting on the tiled floor. It had been a whole five or six seconds since he cast the spell, he could probably cast it again, right? Deep breaths. Steady wand. " _REDUCTO!_ "

The wall  _crunched_ inwards, and then there was - a hole in the wall.

And a pipe, leading downwards into the darkness.

"Oh," said Ron, in a small, startled voice. And then: "Percy, are you  _sure_ you're okay?"

Percy squinted up at his brother, who seemed to have blurred into a half-formed blob of black and red. "I, um," he said, and was alarmed to hear his voice shaking. "I am ... not actually sure I can stand up?" He tried anyway, and found it made him even more dizzy even as he failed completely. "Shit. Ron, you're - you're going to have to go in alone," he realized. "You can't wait for me to recover, it'll take too long, it's been  _hours_  already."

Even through his blurred vision, Percy could see Ron's eyes, bright and blue, go very wide. He felt a vague, painful disgust at himself for frightening his little brother. "I can't do this alone!" protested Ron, horrified, and Percy winced. "Percy, I'm not - I'm not the twins, I'm not  _you_ , I'm just - I'm good at chess and really low-level jinxes and that's  _it,_ " Ron stammered. "And, and I'm learning, maybe, but I'm not - I'm not good at things, not like you are, I still haven't actually  _won_  any duels, I can't - "

"Ron," said Percy, sharply, hoarsely, and his little brother stopped babbling abruptly. He was not getting less blurry, but Percy could imagine his face, round and freckled and blue-eyed and capable of astounding stubbornness. It was frustrating at times, but what he needed right now was someone who wouldn't give up, and Ron  _was_ that. "Ron," he repeated, his voice a little steadier. "I believe in you."

There was a little spark, at the edges of his vision, like a candle-flame flickering just out of sight.

And then he blacked out.

* * *

"Well," sighed Victor, doing his best not to move, "this is terrible."

Natalia said a great many words, all of them entirely silent. Victor couldn't read lips at all, but he suspected they were largely profane.

It took him a solid minute to reach his wand, on the floor just out of his reach, but after he'd done that he pointed it at Natalia and said firmly, " _Finite incantatem_." To his alarm, he almost blacked out on the spot; Old Nott's casual use of a silencing charm was apparently nearly as powerful as Victor. "I cannot wait to be a real adult," he grumbled, taking as deep a breath as he could without moving his legs at all. "Nasya, do you have healing spells?"

" - ing condescending fucking jerk," fumed Natalia, finishing her thought. "No, I don't, my dad tried to teach me once and I was shit at it. I think Adri does though, any guesses how far behind us they are?"

"Hours, I would imagine," replied Viktor. They'd spent several hours sneaking into Malfoy Manor, but he was honestly expecting Hermione and Adriana to be nearly a day behind them. Top speed on a broomstick varied a  _lot_ with rider skill. "Can you levitate me onto - no, wait, shit, he took our brooms."

Natalia made an annoyed noise. "When the hell did he do that?"

"Not a cursed clue. May've just destroyed them while we weren't paying maximal attention to them, that'd be faster and harder to notice. You rescue injured people over your summer vacations, do you not even have  _splinting_ spells?"

"I'm a scout, not a healer!" said Natalia, somewhat defensively. "I just, you know, fly around and scan and point at people for my dad to descend dramatically on and be heroic at,  _he's_ the healer... Occasionally I fight jobberknolls, the bloody things  _swarm_ if you startle them, it's very annoying... Anyway, no, I don't know any splinting charms."

Viktor let his forehead fall gently against the floor. He was too far away from the walls and couldn't really move, but he felt the need to express his sense of despair somehow. "We were extremely well-prepared for this," he grumbled.

Natalia rolled her eyes in his general direction. "You're hilarious," she said dryly. "And yeah, we were. I don't suppose you've illegally learned to Apparate while I wasn't looking?"

"I have not."

"Damn." Natalia smirked. "Wanna bet Dravya learns by the time she's fourteen?"

"Sure. Two Galleons she prioritizes healing spells," countered Viktor, "if she finds out her uncle defaults to bone-breaker hexes before constrictor charms."

"Fair," conceded Natalia. "Ah, our little English girl, so tiny and well-intentioned. I will be so sad if her uncle murders her."

Viktor winced. "Quite." A long pause, while he tried to think of alternative solutions to their predicament. It occurred to him that they were  _currently_  in the basement of a family who  _really didn't like_ the wizard who'd just seriously injured them. "Think a Malfoy would talk to us before violence? We could yell for help."

"That seems like it has a lot of dangerous points of failure," said Natalia. "Among them, you know, the thing where we broke into their house."

"Fair point. And neither my English or my acting is probably good enough to sell  _he threatened us to break in for him we're totally on your side_ , that's not really plausible, why would he have made us do it and then showed up himself anyway, there'd be no - "

At this point there was a faint pop, and a tall, bony elderly woman in sweeping robes of extremely bright chartreuse-and-cobalt plaid materialized in the hallway. She was wearing a rather enormous decorative witches' hat, containing an entire stuffed vulture, in exactly the same color scheme. In her right hand she held a wand, readied in a very recognizable way that suggested classical training in duelling. In her off hand she carried an enormous, bright-red handbag. "Ah," she said, gazing down at them with vague distaste.

"Um," said Viktor.

"You set off several alarms," the witch explained. "When you'd been here for long enough I eventually bothered to care."

"Are you, um, Lady Malfoya," asked Viktor, choosing not to even attempt to remember what Lucius Malfoy's wife might actually be called. Hermione hadn't mentioned, if she knew. It'd probably be something stupid and British that he couldn't pronounce, anyway.

The witch laughed, a strident head-tossing cackle that should've thrown her hat clear off but mysteriously didn't. "I am distinctly not the Lady Malfoy," she said. "Who are you, children, and what has injured you so?"

" ... um," said Viktor, because Hermione's great-uncle had not actually  _introduced himself by name_ at any point during their brief and ill-fated conversation. "I am Viktor, she is Natalia, her English worse from mine, and I do not know but  _probably_  his name was Nott, because he is our friend's great-uncle, her name is," he sighed, " _er-mee-oh-ninya_? Nott? He is her mother's brother's father or some like - "

"Jared Nott?" suggested the witch.

"Um, maybe?"

She gestured slightly above her head - not very, she was quite tall - and said, "So high?" and added, "Thin, bald, very short beard, constant expression of distant and irritating smugness? Has a grand-niece at Durmstrang called  _Hermione_?"

He only had sort of a vague guess at the meaning of the English word  _smugness_ but the rest seemed entirely true. "Yes."

"Jared Nott," she repeated, not a question this time. "And in what way have you managed to offend him from Lucius Malfoy's basement, pray tell?"

This would be  _way_ less worrying if he had any idea who this witch was. "Vanted rescuing the, ah, stolen Muggles." She raised an inquisitive eyebrow, and he tried to explain. "Um, Dravya, she tells us her pet Muggles are stolen, Malfoys making threat against family, very attached, says please save them, ve fly faster than she, so ve are here? Guards not problem." Natalia made an amused, dismissive sound, and then winced because she'd moved slightly too much. Viktor shot her a sympathetic look. "Old man here, took them, says  _stay_  - "

"Ah-huh. Then soon he will be back," she said. "And accordingly, you had best not be here when we returns. Tell me, child, is there a reason I should help you?"

Viktor frowned. "Maybe, who are you?"

The witch laughed. "Jared Nott's personal nemesis," she offered, "does that help?"

"Not ... really ... " Viktor sighed, wishing his English was better. "You are against Nott  _family_  all, or -  _augh,_ words, sprechen sie Deutsch?"

She grinned at him, and switched languages like putting on a new hat. "Oh, you speak  _German_ , you sounded so Slavic I didn't bother checking. Try your explanation again."

Natalia said, "Oh, thank Vodyanoy, you speak something civilized," as Viktor was sighing a sigh of deep relief and then recovering from the unwise degree to which this had jostled his assorted broken bones. Natalia promptly launched into an explanation. She had a strong Russian accent in German, too, but she was  _understandable._ "Alright, so my adorable roommate Dravya Nott who you apparently know by an adorable but unpronounceable British name has pet Muggles she's very attached to, and apparently the guy who lives in this house kidnapped them for unclear but unfriendly reasons, threatened her cousin, she was very upset - she flies like shit though, so me and Viktor flew over to rescue them. We broke in, stunned the idiot guards, pulled the Muggles out, all very smooth. The Muggles seem to think they're her  _parents_ though because someone thought it'd be funny to enchant them, probably Malfoy, honestly I'm kind of impressed by what a hilariously tragic prank it is, given their whole purpose apparently was to breed Dravya-lookalikes for some kind of weird ritual. Anyway we got here and it was a super successful rescue right until her uncle showed up and fucked us up and left with the Muggles and also our broomsticks. Or broke them, we're not sure, we didn't actually see him do anything, the brooms are just mysteriously gone."

The old witch stared at Natalia for a long second, and then started giggling. It was a really unsettling noise.

"Um," said Viktor, "so, that all said, my concern is that if you hate  _Jared_ Nott you may also be inclined to hurt the Nott we  _like_ \- "

"Oh, children, no, I will not hurt your friend," said the old witch, her giggles subsiding. She was still grinning widely. "I rather think I might make her the Minister for Magic, if I can manage it, and I am  _rather_ good at that sort of thing. I think we should go to my house."

It arguably  _could_ get worse, but Viktor wasn't actually sure  _how_ , so. He nodded.

Natalia said, "Yeah, that seems at least sort of okay."

"Lovely," said the mysterious witch, and she crouched down carefully and put a hand on each of their heads, and then with a horrible painful crunching  _crack_  they were gone from Malfoy Manor.

* * *

A jet-black owl turned up in the Slytherin common room, somehow, with a note tied to one leg by purple ribbon. Nobody was really sure how owls  _ever_ got into the dungeons, but they'd been managing it since forever. Hufflepuffs reported the same phenomenon, even though they didn't have windows either, not like Gryffindor and Ravenclaw in their towers. The general consensus was that Hogwarts was sort of gently accommodating owl post in some mysterious space-shifty way that wasn't even theoretically understandable.

At any rate, this particular theoretically non-understandable owl flew to a second-year boy called Theodore Nott. Everyone crammed into the common room stared at him.

He blinked at it, and pulled the note free.

> _Theodore:_
> 
> _I require your participation in solving a somewhat delicate matter._
> 
> _There is a secret passage thirty-seven paces lakeward of the Slytherin Common Room's door. Tap the wall thrice with your left hand and say 'Levo' and you'll find yourself exactly thirty-seven paces north of the Hogwarts gate. I will retrieve you there five minutes from when I expect you to receive this letter._

It wasn't signed, but it didn't really need to be.

Theo sighed, and watched the piece of parchment burn painlessly in his hand without his intervention.

"My father requires me to attend him immediately," he said, to his silently watching House, in a tone of great irritation. "For some very important reason, I'm sure."

"I'm not testifying shit for you in front of Lord Malfoy if you leave right now," said the prefect he'd spoken to earlier.

Theo got up anyway, and brushed his robes flat, and paced calmly towards the door. An attentive observer, such as approximately six people in all of Slytherin House, might have been able to tell he was quite frightened and confused. "Yeah," said Theodore, opening the common room door, "that's fair." With that, he was gone.

Pansy Parkinson started to laugh.

* * *

Ron Weasley picked up his wand and took a deep breath and jumped.


	15. The Heir of -

_April 22, 1992. Midnight, just outside the Hogwarts grounds._

Theo had been warned, but he still nearly fell over when he was abruptly outside. It wasn't at all like Apparition, and despite bearing no actual resemblance to the experience of being on a staircase while it was moving, somehow felt more similar to  _that_. He'd managed to avoid most of the weirder bits of geometry in the castle, where you'd walk up three flights of stairs and still be in the dungeons, or whatever, but he'd run into it once or twice, and it was the same feeling: Hogwarts had decided he was somewhere else, with no concern for the petty problem of the actual space in between the two points.

His father was standing on the path just by the edge of the grounds, pacing. The gloom made the hollows of his eyes look like nothing but shadows, and the faint breeze rustled his great black robes dramatically around him. He looked like a terrifying real-life version of the cartoon Death from the Tales of Beedle the Bard.

"Um," said Theodore, trying to keep the anxiety from his voice. "I hope this is really urgent, Father, because  _everyone_ is going to think I'm the Heir of - "

"Lucius Malfoy is attempting to discredit our entire family so that he can install the Parkinsons as the new Noble House," explained the terrifying harbinger of doom. "I expect he was hoping to get me to fund it with ransom money, but he can afford to pay himself if necessary."

That did seem sort of urgent, yes. "And then he'd basically have two noble votes," realized Theodore. "Since they basically do whatever he says. ... how?"

"Correct." His father was still pacing, his heavy boots making muted crunching sounds on the damp grass. " _Lord Malfoy_ ," he growled, the honorific very nearly an insult, "has captured the Mudblood girl's parents. I had planned to simply kill them but when I attempted to retrieve them for questioning I underestimated his ability to use his father's traps against me. The Muggles are still in his possession and he almost certainly has verifiable evidence of my presence, which means he can credibly argue that I tried to retrieve them alive. No one will give a damn that I was planning to kill them after I'd found out what they might have told Lucius. Anything I do now will appear defensive and weaken my case."

"Um," said Theodore again, and took a deep breath. "Um, what can I do to help?"

His father sighed. "If  _I_ go to Augusta bloody Longbottom and ask for help, she will laugh in my face. If  _you_  go, she may actually help you, because you are small and harmless and she has been known to experience a heartbeat once every few decades."

"Oh," said Theodore in a small voice. "What - do I ask for?"

Theodore was sort of impressed that his father was managing to speak clearly through the aggressive degree to which he was grinding his teeth. "Your  _beloved cousin_  is being targeted by the young Malfoys through no fault of her own," explained the old wizard, very dryly. "Her  _pet Muggles_ have been captured and must of course be rescued. Augusta may find it entertaining if you tell her I'm not doing anything because I'm evil, rather than because it would be blindingly stupid of me. My best prediction is that she will ask in return that you help her find out what attacked Draco Malfoy and various Weasleys. She will probably also threaten you, but don't take it seriously."

"Oh, um, okay," said Theodore shakily. "Do you suppose she might also testify that I am definitely not the Heir of Slytherin, if Lord Malfoy - "

"With any luck we will not actually end up in front of the Wizengamot," sighed his father. "But if you are reasonably helpful to her, yes. Take this, you will leave presently." He handed Theodore a spent match, which he supposed must be a Portkey, and then reached out and tapped the purple crescent moon pinned to the front of Theo's robes with one bony finger, making it ring faintly in the darkness. "In substantial extremity, break your cloak pin," he instructed. "It will bring you home through most wards, though it will not work in Hogwarts. Further questions?"

Theo considered for a moment whether this question was a good idea, and eventually decided he might as well. "Did you tell Hermione?" he ventured. He wouldn't go so far as to admit that he  _liked_  his fake cousin, but she was very powerful and very clever, and it was hard not to at least tolerate someone when you were going about pretending they were family.

"Oh, yes, I sent her an owl several days ago," said his father. "She pleaded for their lives, it was disgusting. And sent her friends to rescue them, apparently. I caught and disabled them, they were obviously inclined to cause trouble, but they vanished during the time I was dealing with Abraxas' legacy. If they actually manage to do anything useful I may refrain from punishing the girl. At least this is genuinely not her fault; Lucius would have chosen some other route if this were not available and there's really no way she could possibly have been responsible for Draco." The old man paused, and narrowed his shadowed eyes at Theodore. " ... you  _didn't_  assault Narcissa's son, did you, Theodore?"

"No!" exclaimed Theodore at once. "No, of course not! We're friends ... sort of ... anyway no! I definitely didn't do anything, everyone just thinks it's me because apparently everyone and their brother heard that Lord Malfoy said so."

"I see. Well. Further questions?"

"I, um, what are you going to ... do?"

"Pace angrily and wait," grumbled his father. "I am considering assassinating Camellia Parkinson. It would be a great deal of fun but I am undecided on whether it would help. Portkey in five seconds."

Theodore took a deep breath.

* * *

_Somewhere above Oxford._

"STOPPING FOR DIRECTIONS," yelled Hermione, gliding to a halt as she saw the lights of London. Adriana looped under her as she carefully balanced her wand on her palm, ready to catch it should she drop it. Natalia might have enough practice at this to track someone while moving, but Hermione did not.

 _"Point me_ , Viktor Krum," she said, and watched her wand spin in her hand. She squinted at it. It was dark, but she was pretty sure it was pointing  _north_.

How odd. She could have sworn Wiltshire was west of London.

* * *

_Deep under Hogwarts._

The wide pipe was surprisingly smooth, but not at all clean; it was slick with grime and dirt. Ron resigned himself to having to admit to his mother that he had yet again made a mess of his school robes doing something insane. He yelped as the pipe leveled out and dumped him out like a wobbly fish onto a surface that crunched when he landed. "Ow," he muttered, and put his hands down to push himself back to his feet, and realized what exactly he was lying on. "Aaaaaaah what the bloody hell," he squeaked, and scrambled upright in a hurry, breathing hard. Bones. A whole room full of  _bones_. "Percy?" he yelled back up the tunnel. "Percy this place is full of dead things!"

There was no answer. Percy was probably still out cold.

Ron took several deep, steadying breaths, and headed down the corridor. It was surprisingly easy to adjust to the crunching sound underfoot, when you had other things to worry about. Such as Slytherin's Monster, and your baby sister. Once or twice he forgot, though, and was startled all over again. At least it only smelled like dust; most of these bones were very, very old. But the sound echoed against the high stone ceilings, loud against the silence. There weren't any of the sounds you would normally expect in a cave like this - no distant dripping water, not even from the bathroom just right there, no sound of scurrying mice. Perhaps Slytherin's Monster had scared all the vermin away, or something. At least, he supposed, that would mean there weren't any spiders.

The hallway began to open up a bit, to a larger room. The sight of an enormous shadow lying across the floor made him flinch backwards into the hallway, but once his eyes adjusted to the torchlit gloom, Ron realized that it wasn't actually alive. No, it was a frighteningly huge empty snakeskin, rolled neatly into place like a sleeping monster, but without head or eyes or mass. He stared at it for a long moment. "A giant snake," he said aloud. "Of  _course_  it's a snake. I cannot believe we thought  _Slytherin's Monster_ might be anything more creative than a  _huge-arse snake_."

(So Luna Lovegood had been right about that, too. Ron wondered where the Petrifactions had come from. Perhaps basilisks had been thought extinct for long enough that the books had been wrong about what they could do? Maybe basilisks didn't really kill you, just turned you to stone, but a few centuries ago people hadn't known how to brew Mandrake Draught and so the difference was academic?)

His voice echoed strangely against the walls, high-pitched and frightened, and Ron shivered.

(" _Snake - snake - snake_.")

He forged onward.

After what felt like an eternity of walking, the torches began to change color. Each was slightly yellower than the last, and then greener. At last, when the torches had become entirely bright Slytherin green, he arrived at a door. A huge, ornate door, to be specific, made all of heavy stone and metal, covered in intricate carvings of snakes crawling over one another. Most of them had little jet-black stones for eyes, but a few had glowing emeralds, and in the sickly green torchlight the general effect was extremely unpleasant. It felt like he must have gone miles, but the distance didn't really matter, even though his legs were kind of tired.

No, what mattered was that the door was locked.

* * *

_Slightly north of Blackpool._

Crack.

They tumbled into an unceremonious and extremely painful heap on an very nice carpet. The elderly witch with the ridiculous hat promptly levitated them onto nearby couches and incanted a series of charms over them, weaving her wand in complex motions they were in entirely too much pain to appreciate. Afterwards, however, they could sit up and look around. On inspection, they were in the sitting room of some large mansion, with a large glass window overlooking rolling grass and, in the distance, greenhouses.

"Welcome," said the witch with the ridiculous hat, "to Longbarrow." She was still speaking German. "Home of the ancient and proud family Longbottom, or what's left of it, anyway. I am Madame Augusta Longbottom, regent of the family in the name of my grandson." She frowned briefly at the bloodstain on her carpet. It went away, and the carpet wiggled in a way that managed to seem apologetic. "You should be largely healed but you will not be able to do anything strenuous for at least a day," she continued briskly, "I am, alas, not a professional mediwitch. Introduce yourselves, children, name and nationality."

Natalia said, "I am Natalia Alexeyevna Sokolova of Russia, and this is Viktor Krum of Bulgaria. We are students of Durmstrang."

"And you are, as you explained earlier, here to rescue Muggles from Lucius Malfoy. Will wonders never cease," murmured Augusta. "Have you any other useful information for me before I go investigate what has currently become of Miss Hermione's, ah, poor enchanted pet Muggles?"

"Er-mee-ny - whatever, Dravya - and our friend Adriana are also on their way to the Malfoys' house and are probably in the country by now?" offered Viktor.

"Ah, that is a concern," said Augusta. "I shall keep an eye or three out for them."

She vanished with a pop.

"This is weird and terrible," said Natalia. She picked up a nearby table ornament, which took the form of an elaborate open rose carved out of some sort of dusty brown rock, and frowned suspiciously at it.

Viktor shrugged. "At least we're not bleeding to death anymore?"

"There is that," conceded Natalia. She put down the ornament and continued to look around the room. It was very tastefully decorated, mostly in muted browns and greens, and entirely free of anything that even vaguely resembled information. No books, no paper, no portraits. "Does she seem kinda insane to you?"

"A little, but the good kind of insane, maybe. What are you looking for?"

Natalia, craning her neck to try to look through the doorway, made a frustrated noise. " _Anything!_ We don't know anything about this witch, she could be lying to - "

There was a familiar-sounding shriek from outside, and then the sound of a broomstick impacting the side of the building.

"Um," said Viktor.

Distantly, another yell, and words they could only catch about a quarter of. " _Theodore?_ What in the - [muffled yelling] - Malfoy Manor - [more muffled yelling] -  _why_  - "

Then, Adriana, deeper and louder, and probably closer: " _Natalia!_ "

"IN HERE!" yelled Natalia. "NO DANGER BUT WE CAN'T MOVE."

" _Alohomora!_ " they heard Hermione say, and then a crackle, and a yelp. " _Reducto!_ ", she tried next, which yielded a louder crackle and a thump and an " _Ow_ ," from an unfamiliar reedy voice of a boy probably around Hermione's age.

"We can't get through the door!" said Adriana. "It's warded!"

"Well, that makes sense, honestly," said Viktor. He raised his voice to be heard on the other side of the door which was on the other side of the room from the couches they couldn't get up from. "THIS HOUSE BELONGS TO SOMEBODY CALLED AUGUSTA LONGBOTTOM. SHE RESCUED US AFTER PROBABLY YOUR GREAT-UNCLE NOTT SHOWED UP AND BROKE LIKE HALF OUR BONES."

"HE _WHAT_ ," screeched Hermione.

"I'm holding you to that bet," said Viktor to Natalia, somewhat smugly.

"You're on, I still think she'll do Apparition first, she hates flying too much," disagreed Natalia.

" _Why are you all speaking German or something?_ " yelled the unknown voice.

Hermione's response, in English, was not clearly audible but it contained the word "Anglocentrism" and was composed almost entirely of derision. Viktor snickered. "She's yelling at him for thinking the British are the center of the universe," he explained helpfully to Natalia. Natalia laughed.

"Where are the Muggles?" asked Adriana, who was so far winning the 'make yourself understood through a wall without sounding like you're screaming' contest handily.

"WE DON'T KNOW," yelled Natalia back. "MADAM WHATEVER-SHE'S-CALLED RAN OFF TO FIND OUT I THINK."

There was a pop, and Augusta Longbottom appeared.

"Good news and bad news, children," she said brightly, and then, " ... why are there  _more children_ here?"

She opened the door with a wave of her hand, and peered down at Hermione, Adriana, and a dark-haired boy as reedy as his voice in extremely well-tailored black robes, with a cloak-pin shaped like the same purple crescent moon Hermione was currently wearing emblazoned on her chest. "Well," she said, "Theodore, I suppose this must be your cousin Hermione."

"Yes, Madam Longbottom," said, apparently, Theodore. "I had come to ask for your help on her behalf, actually, but she got here about ten seconds before I did."

"She's not the one who crashed into the wall, though, that was me," said Adriana brightly. "Sorry about that. I'm Adriana Dalca, I am here mostly for moral support."

"Why are Viktor and Natalia here?" asked Hermione.

Madam Longbottom laughed. "Come in, children. It seems we have more to discuss than I was anticipating."

* * *

_April 23, 1993, well after midnight. The Chamber of Secrets._

"GINNY," yelled Ron, for lack of better ideas. "GINNY, CAN YOU HEAR ME?"

Distantly, muffled through the layers of stone, he heard the sound of laughter.

It was not a pleasant sound.

* * *

Ron stared at the locked door for about ten seconds. Then he let himself dwell on the crushing terror of utter failure for another five.  _(I am only thirteen years old and I am not enough, I will not be enough, my baby sister is going to die because I couldn't cast a blasting curse well enough to keep Percy from spending everything he had just breaking down the door, he shouldn't believe in me, I'm not like him, I'm not good at things - )_

Then he started screaming, heedless of the absurd high-pitched screech of his mid-puberty vocal cords.

"FUCK YOU," he yelled into the darkness. "IF YOU THINK YOU'RE SO SCARY WHY ARE YOU HIDING BEHIND A BIG DUMB LOCKED DOOR, HUH? NO WONDER YOU KEEP GOING AFTER FIRST-YEARS, YOU DON'T WANT ANYONE TO FIND OUT YOU'RE A COWARD."

The chamber echoed.

Ron took a deep breath, and banged his fist against the door. It  _boomed_ , low and ominous, as he slammed his tiny barely-a-teenager hands against it, fruitlessly wishing to make a dent. "COME OUT HERE AND FIGHT ME. I'M NOT AFRAID OF YOU."

A flash of light, warm and red against the dim green flame of the torches and the slimy grey of the walls, flashed across the hallway. In the distance, the shrill cold laughter grew louder. A great bird with wings of sunset looped twice neatly around Ron's head and settled on his shoulder like it belonged, and he barely registered its presence, absorbed in the all-consuming need to attack the door.

_Boom. Boom._

_**"COWARD!"**_ screamed Ron Weasley, who had never quite internalized the rule Percy had set. (All the better, Percy would later say; this situation really had needed a little Gryffindoring.)

_Boom._

The door collapsed inward in a rush of flames.

* * *

_April 22, 1993, a little earlier in the evening. Longbarrow, Ancestral Home of the Longbottoms_

"As I was saying," said Madam Longbottom, "I have good news and bad news, children."

" ... bad news first," suggested Hermione, when she realized everyone was looking at her.

The old witch nodded approvingly, which was weirdly soothing. "The bad news," she began, "is that in a stunning display of moderate cleverness Lucius Malfoy has realized that keeping Muggles as pets is actually illegal, and he is now threatening to have your entire family arrested for  _that_ rather than trying to blackmail anyone. The good news is that the Muggles in question do not at this time appear to be seriously injured or traumatized."

Viktor translated this in summary for Natalia, who then piped up, "Muggles are enchanted! Think they are being actually your parents, isn't that  _hilariously tragic_ _?"_

"Hilariously," said Viktor, giving Hermione a somewhat pointed look.

Hermione winced a little at that. So Viktor probably knew, she thought. Viktor knew, and perhaps more importantly was defending her, which was great, but he was defending her in a way that suggested he was pretty sure Natalia would react badly if she figured it out, which was less so. "That's, um, kind of horrifying, actually?" she offered awkwardly.

"I am never taking you to my hometown," said Adriana dryly, "the monuments would give you an adorable ethical aneurysm. Hey, wait, it's totally legal to kill them but you can't keep them as pets? That's a weird rule, at home you can't kill them because it upsets the environmentalists but no one would particularly care if you were  _nice_ to them, that's like making it illegal to feed the ducks."

"It is actually in many places illegal to feed the ducks, Adri, because people give them bread which is bad for them and then they die and it upsets the environment," said Hermione, somewhat automatically, trying not to think about what horrifying atrocity a small magical town in Carpathia would be most likely to have monuments to. No, really, she definitely did not want to think about it, it probably involved a lot of blood - "Um, I didn't know about that specific rule though, about Muggles, I do not actually like to break the law if I can avoid it, I would have ... done something ... else ... "

Madam Longbottom was giving Hermione a really amused look now. "It's probably a good thing you went to Durmstrang, dear, you would not have been a very good Slytherin," she said with a knifelike smile. Theodore sighed, and Hermione wondered whether Madam Longbottom  _knew_ she was saying something terribly ironic or she just judged everyone that way. "At any rate, the further bad news is that while your great-uncle apparently did think to put anti-tampering spells on your Muggles to make it at least  _nontrivial_  to memory charm them into serving as clear witnesses for a major Statute of Secrecy violation, Lucius has things he can use as corroborating evidence if he frames the situation the right way and so he seems to be applying a considerable amount of determination to the task. I think they will not last long. Meanwhile, of course, he is sending Jared repeated owls reminding him that he can avoid all this drama if he'll just explain in detail a crime he did not in fact orchestrate as far as I know." Pause. "Speaking of which, you  _didn't_ in fact Petrify Draco Malfoy, did you, Theodore? I wouldn't actually blame you."

"No! Of course not!" Theo fumed, throwing up his hands in annoyance. "I don't know how to do that! And unlike you crazy people, I actually kind of  _like_ Draco!"

"Yes, of course,  _I'm_  the crazy one," said Madam Longbottom, rolling her eyes. "So, moving on to the part of this situation  _I_ care about, Ginevra Weasley is apparently missing, courtesy of the Heir of Slytherin, and my grandson, who is close friends with Ronald Weasley," Theo made a surprisingly expressive disgusted face, which she ignored utterly, "is likely to be very upset, should he recover from Petrifaction to find deaths have occurred in his absence. So, I propose to you a deal, children." She looked between Hermione and Theodore, thoughtfully. They both schooled their expressions carefully into respectful inviting  _I am definitely listening politely_ shapes, like good little well-trained pureblood children. "If you will do as I ask, I will go take Lucius' evidence away from him, thus preventing the total political implosion of your family unit. Given the way both sides of this conflict have motive to do very unpleasant things to the poor Muggles if the situation were resolved in an unsatisfactory way, I do think it would be best to kill them - humanely, of course - "

"No!" cried Hermione, stricken, like perhaps the worst-trained pureblood child any self-respecting pureblood Slytherin had ever met. Whatever, even Theo was slipping on his manners today, no one would read that much into it, right? "No, please, please don't! There has to be something else you could do that would still work, what if you, um, what if ... " There had to be something, anything that wouldn't be met with  _yes, but this situation will not stay unresolved forever, and they are right in the crossfire no matter who wins, your uncle will want them tortured for giving him an unexpected weak point and Lucius will want them tortured for not being good enough blackmail._

_And you're thirteen and you can't stop them._

"What if - what if you memory charm them," she said, finally.

Augusta raised an eyebrow at her. "Memory charm them?"

"Pretend like you killed them and, and drag them off and enchant them to forget I ever existed and they really really want to move to Australia - "

Natalia interrupted, "Vhy this is different from killing them?"

"What? Why not?" protested Hermione. "Of course it's different! They'd be alive!"

"Yes but  _you_  vouldn't know difference - Adri, vhy that face again?"

Adriana sighed. "We talked about this - okay, look, see, imagine somebody asked you whether you'd rather your cat forget you exist or die, you'd rather your cat go be cute and fluffy somewhere else, right - "

Natalia made a somewhat puzzled face. " ... No? Pretty fluffy Zhasha is  _my_ cat, rather she be dead if not?"

Viktor shot her a dark look. "Why," he muttered in grumpy Bulgarian, "are all of my friends evil?" Hermione felt a rush of sympathy toward him, but said nothing _._ She'd probably at best ruined her parents' lives, and had snuck her way into an incredibly evil family group on purpose with violent threats, and was lying to her friends to get them to put themselves in danger on her behalf. The alternative might have been death, but, well. She didn't really feel like she was entitled to claim not to be evil.)

"Well," said Madam Longbottom cheerfully, drawing their attention back onto her where she was looming, stately and behatted, over the five teenagers like some sort of ominous perfectly still statue. "I would be  _happy_  to Memory Charm your Muggles instead of killing them, dear, if it's at all feasible. Provided that  _you,_ " she nodded at Theodore, "successfully rescue the littlest Weasley from the Chamber of Secrets. I cannot go there myself, you see, because with Headmaster Dumbledore banned from the premises and the school on lockdown, I would be risking rather a lot of legal trouble that I expect no one would bother to point at a child who is merely trying to rescue a classmate."

"Oh my god, are you serious," protested Theodore. "You want me, by myself, to go fight whoever is  _actually_  Petrifying people, you realize that's like a seventh-year spell, the people who think it could possibly be someone our age are  _stupid_  - "

"I will help?" offered Viktor.

"You will not," said Madam Longbottom sternly. "You are only mostly healed, if you try to move more than two steps you will fall over. And I understand there are political reasons," she smirked, "that Miss Nott cannot go to Hogwarts any more than I can." Hermione sighed. So Neville's grandmother definitely knew, now, too, though she seemed inclined not to tell. And she was right - of course Hermione couldn't go talk to Ron Weasley. He was too likely to recognize her, duelling costume and straightened hair and all; the Slytherins hadn't, but they hadn't had all their classes and meals with her. Give it a few years for puberty to change the structure of her face and maybe not, but it hadn't been that long. "However, Miss - Dalca, did you say? - you are neither injured nor a political disaster waiting to happen," the old witch added. "You could go and help, if you liked."

Adriana looked at Hermione. "I, I don't want to ask you to go without me," said Hermione, in a small voice.

"Aww, don't feel bad,  _minunăție_ , it's not like I don't benefit here, I can't have you getting arrested, I'd fail History," Adriana reassured her.

God, but Hermione loved having friends. Even if they were all kind of evil and racist except for Viktor. "Thank you, Adri. Really."

At this point Theodore pointed out, quite reasonably, that although he was perfectly capable of navigating Hogwarts and lying to teachers about how he was totally on purpose trying to help the Weasleys for  _moral reasons -_  Hermione had to resist the urge to pat him on the shoulder, he just looked so pathetically resigned and she had to remind herself that he would probably not find that reassuring at all - had no actual idea where to find the Chamber of Secrets. Madam Longbottom, however, had an answer to that problem, too. She explained that fifty years ago, when she had been in school, this had happened before. For lack of a better thing to try, perhaps they should see if Moaning Myrtle was having an interesting day. "She was not a very good witness fifty years ago, I caution you," she said, "but often when a curse of some kind takes effect in a place, a ghost in that place who died to the very same curse will notice, and she may be able to report something more interesting when she has not just been personally murdered."

Hermione really wished she was in a mental state to appreciate what an interesting academic fact that was. As it was, she just nodded sort of distractedly and looked at Theo and tried not to let her expression seem to pathetic.

"Ugh," said Theo, "ugh, I should have been a Ravenclaw, Slytherin politics are just  _the worst thing_."

"Chin up, little Brit, if it was something really scary wouldn't somebody have died by now?" said Adriana brightly. "So, how are we getting to this school, then?"

* * *

_April 23, 1993, 12:45 AM. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

It transpired that the answer was side-along Apparition. Not super pleasant for kids under seventeen, but technically safe, so Madam Longbottom gave them each an anti-nausea potion and dropped them right on a secret passage that she said would lead to the second floor of the castle. "It's a bit of a walk, but you'll come out right behind the portrait of the three nuns," she explained. "Hogwarts does its best to keep its conflicts nonlethal when only children are involved, you know, but all the same do try not to die."

So off they went, two unqualified children on their way to try to save two more.

"So you're our little English girl's cousin," said Adriana conversationally, as they walked briskly down the secret passage. "Teh-oh-dore. She says good things about you."

Theodore blinked. "Does she really? ... why don't any of you call her by her name, anyway?"

"It is very hard to pronounce," explained Adriana. "Her-my-oh-ni, or so? Annoying. Your language is having too many sounds. Do not think she loves  _Dravya_  so much, though, soon I think she vill try to pick something else that is closer to real name.  _Miosha,_ maybe. Ve vill say vhatever she likes; names, vary fluid around Russians, my roommate she used to say she was called  _Natasha_ and then changed her mind this year and now she is Natalia except when instead Nasya for friends, these are basically the same thing." She shrugged. "Your cousin, I vas saying, she says you are clever and not as terrible as expected."

Theodore snorted. "Not as terrible as expected. Glowing endorsement. She's what, your roommate? You've known her a year or something? How come you flew all the way out here to deal with our insane problems?"

Shrug. "Thought it might be fun? Also she is small and cute and should not be sad even though she is sad about strange things."

Eventually, they made it into the school, which was strangely dark and quiet, with all the students confined to their common rooms and the teachers presumably off somewhere arguing about whether to send everyone home. Theodore led the way to the second-floor girl's bathroom, which he had never been to but which Madam Longbottom (ugh) had said would contain a ghost who might have something interesting to say.

There they found - "Prefect Weasley," said Theodore, astonished.

Percy Weasley was sprawled quite undignifiedly across the floor of the bathroom, mostly unconscious, and bleeding slightly from his eyes and ears. There was a massive hole in the wall, and a pipe leading down into the darkness. "Th'hell're you," he mumbled, squinting up at them through his cracked glasses. His eyes completely failed to focus. "Kid," he identified, rather less than confidently. "G'way. Not safe. Ron'll. Ron'll handle it."

"Yes, well, for complicated politics reasons I have to do it anyway," grumped Theodore. "Shorter tall skinny asshole Weasley is down there, is he? What happened to you?"

Percy gestured vaguely at the wall and said, "Boom," and passed out again.

"Red hair boy blew a hole in magic wall and is now too magic tired to do things," translated Adriana helpfully.

"Yes, thanks, I got that," sighed Theodore.

And down the pipe they went. Around a loop, and into the piles of tiny dead bones. Off in the distance, there was the sound of indistinguishable yelling.

"Ew," said Adriana, when they landed, and then " _Scourgify_ ," and brushed slime and bone dust irritably off of her uniform. "Blegh, at least our dungeons have  _stairs_."

"Our  _actual_  dungeons have stairs too," protested Theo somewhat lamely, as he set off briskly toward the sound. "This is a weird secret passage built hundreds of years ago."

Adriana pointed out, " _Stairs_  existed hundreds of years ago," but followed.

Presently, they found Ron Weasley shoving the door open and yelling into the darkness as he sprinted through the doorway, a flash of fire and feathers sparking around him in the gloom. "Ginny! Agh, please still be alive, Ginny, please - Ginny, Merlin, what did you do to her - what the shit, who even  _are_ you? Do I know you?"

Theodore and Adriana exchanged worried glances, and began to sneak up the long entryway, ducking from shadow to shadow between the flickering green torches. It was easy not to be the brightest or most interesting things in the room when the alternatives were Ron Weasley and a literal flaming phoenix. "I am Tom Marvolo Riddle!" proclaimed the young man in a spotless Hogwarts uniform, polished prefect badge gleaming on his chest. There was a tiny figure with red hair collapsed at his feet. "I am the greatest Slytherin that Hogwarts has ever known!"

Ron wasn't even really looking at the phoenix, circling above his head like a beacon. He was looking at his enemy. "Yes, well, can't be that great, can you, if I've never noticed you before -  _tarantallegra_!"

The mysterious young prefect sneered at him. The jinx did, apparently, nothing, though the boy neither dodged nor produced a wand. " _I_ drove Dumbledore out of this castle, Petrified the mudbloods and the fools who got in the way," he boasted. Ron shifted angrily on this spot, practically grinding his battle stance against the stone floor. "I am the heir of Slytherin! And all that Gryffindor's house can muster to oppose me, it seems, is a twelve-year-old boy and a ragged old bird."

A hat dropped from the talons of the circling phoenix, landed neatly on Ron's head.

Tom cackled. "And a patchy old  _Hat_! Oh, this is priceless."

"I'm thirteen actually. And still haven't heard of you," gritted Ron, visibly cataloging his available spells and contemplating how to handle 'doesn't apparently feel the need to even dodge or block,' and pushing the hat carefully up onto his forehead. "Did you graduate or something, answer my question,  _what did you do to Ginny_ \- "

"She's alive," said Tom, waving a hand impatiently, "though not for long. I graduated fifty years ago, as a matter of fact."

"You don't look sixty," said Ron dubiously. " _Furnunculus_ _!_ "

"I am a  _memory_ ," Tom continued, "preserved in a diary for fifty years, ready to awaken as soon as I found a suitable victim." He smirked down at Ginny, pale and still.

"I don't know what that means and I kind of don't care - how about  _stupefy!_ "

"It's cute how you think I need to  _fight_  you," sneered Tom, as the hex passed quite harmlessly through him. He flickered slightly, like a grainy photograph. Ron made a horrified, offended noise. "I would perhaps need to  _fight_ your very interesting brother Percival, who I was  _trying_ to lure down here in the first place. You're boring and twelve, oh, I'm terribly sorry,  _thirteen_ ," he drawled mockingly, "and Esther will find you a delicious snack." Then he  _hissed._ It was a strange, cold, spine-chilling sound, that ate through all the warmth even Fawkes was radiating down into the room.

"What kind of name for a giant snake is  _Esther_ ," demanded Theodore, as he and Adriana finished crossing the room very quietly. Ron abandoned the effort of testing other jinxes - all of which Tom completely ignored - and wheeled around in alarm. He pointed his wand at Theo, instead, retreating several steps to keep Tom in his peripheral vision. Tom stood there smugly, hands in his pockets, looking for all the world like he was having a polite teatime conversation and not standing ominously over the unconscious body of a dying eleven-year-old in Salazar Slytherin's ancient and storied Chamber of Secrets.

" _Esther_  is a Hebrew name which when associated with its companion name  _Hadassah_ as for the Jewish queen is best interpreted as meaning  _hidden righteousness_ ," Tom explained in the irritated lecturing tones of a professor with extremely stupid pupils. "It is an  _eminently_  suitable name for the great inheritance of Slytherin's legacy that this chamber has protected for centuries against all those who wished to drive it out, and you simply don't have the taste to appreciate it. Merlin, I hate children, always all these stupid inane complaints and no sense of the big picture. You would not believe the drivel I had to listen to pretending to be this little idiot's  _diary_. Who's this, now? Are you aware that you've just very unwisely volunteered to join the meal?"

" _Nott_?" said Ron in disbelief. "What are  _you_  doing here? And who're you?"

Theodore sighed deeply. "This is my cousin's friend Adriana and we're here because we had to make a deal with - you know what, can you just. Can you just accept that I'm here to help you because of completely insane Slytherin politics reasons and  _not_ question it or ever bring it up again later if we somehow manage not to die."

"Unlikely!" interjected Tom cheerfully. A heavy shadow was stirring above his head, in the eye sockets of the great bearded statue.

"What - seriously - but  _why_ ," said Ron, astonished.

"It really is a  _very_  long explanation," said Adriana seriously. "And we seem to be, uh, imminently in mortal danger. From. That? Is that .. Esther?"

"It's a basilisk," said Ron, "don't look it in the eyes."

They did their level best to follow this instruction, running away from the heavy slithering sound of the basilisk moving along the ground; but soon it was very clear, from the changing tone of Tom's shrieking from "Kill the stupid bird and go after them!" to "Ignore the bird, ignore it, you can still smell them," that Fawkes had clawed its eyes out. Ron promptly started trying hexes, dashing back and forth out of reach of the great blinded serpent. It did not seem any more impressed by that than Tom had been, unfortunately, nor by anything Adriana or Theodore tried. Ron eventually tried punching Tom, which also didn't work; he ended up flinging himself headlong through the cackling ghost-image, which then kicked him. Apparently, Tom could choose to interact with solid objects and opt out if he didn't feel like it. Ron snarled at him, and then scrambled up to his feet and away as the basilisk's head came down a few meters from his foot.

Ron's movement had stirred something on the ground, however, which Theodore spotted, and ran for.

A little black leather-bound diary, which he had seen before, in the hands of Daphne Greengrass, who had seemed so pale and sad for those few months in the winter.

_Like Ginny Weasley._

"You can't have that!" said Tom, sweeping it hastily off the floor, and began, "Esther - "

Theo channeled his father with all his might and pointed his wand just so and snapped, " _Silencio!",_  and wonder of wonders, the ghost went quiet. "I think we need to destroy that book!" he said, now pointing his wand at it in Tom's hands. It  _looked_ like it was still solid even while he was holding it. "Uh,  _diffindo! Incendio!"_  But though the spells didn't go through like they went through Tom, they did bounce off, useless. _"DIFFINDO! Damn_  it!"

At this point Ron Weasley did something he might have done almost two years previously, in another world, if the situation had been right, in a bathroom with a troll in it. Something very brave, and very stupid. " _Hey!"_ he yelled, abandoning the effort of ducking and running, as the great basilisk slithered around to sniff at Theodore, to open its jaws. As Theodore tried to destroy the very thing, it seemed, that was devouring Ginny's soul. "Hey! Big snake!" He picked up a bit of stone, and flung it at her. " _Look at me!_ Hey!" And he ran, as Esther turned toward the sound of his voice, and -

Adriana made a sort of high-pitched panicked noise and then something quite Russian, and the basilisk's jaw twitched strangely. "Aaaa, s _finţi din ceruri, ah,_ " gasped Adriana, nearly collapsing with the relief of having remembered the spell she wanted, and the exertion of having managed to cast it after the number of hexes they'd all already tried.

Ron twisted in the air, and there was a sword in his hand, suddenly, and the basilisk's teeth closed on him and did not go further, caught in the protective charm Natalia had demonstrated once for use near dragons, because Hermione had asked, that Adriana had been trying to remember as she ran and dodged and ran. "Ha!" said the little redheaded boy, triumphant, somehow glorious from between the basilisk's teeth, drenched in sweat and purpose. As it thrashed, trying in vain to bite down, his robe tore around him, caught in the poisonous teeth. "Fuck you," said Ron, and he dropped his wand, and took the sword in both hands, and drove it into the roof of the basilisk's mouth. " _This_  is what Gryffindor can do!"

Tom - silenced, still holding his book - lurched backwards and away, wide-eyed. Theo gave up on ineffectual spellcraft, dropped his wand too, and lunged for him, passing right through the soul-ghost's wrists and seizing the book in both hands. "No!" shrieked Tom, breaking through the weak silencing spell with the force of his sudden terror. All at once he looked much less like an ominous apparition, and much more like the teenager he was. "No, you can't have it!" He was too weak, not yet an entire person, he barely weighed half of even skinny Theodore. "I was so close, just five more minutes, let go, you  _stupid_  child -"

Ron scrambled toward this conflict, half his robes shredded and his uniform shirt quite drenched in the basilisk's blood, and Theo wrenched the diary from Tom's hands and flung it toward him, and he brought strangely shiny blade - somehow untouched by its recent victory - down onto the strange artifact, which split in half and began to spew ink onto the floor, like blood.

Tom screamed - but quieter.

And quieter.

And then he was gone.

* * *

"Ginny Ginny Ginny  _please be okay_ ," breathed Ron as he dropped the sword and scrambled over to his sister.

Adriana took a deep breath and intoned, " _Ennervate_ ," and then staggered a little on her way over as Ginny opened her eyes. "Ah! Small red hair girl is okay!" she said.

" _Ron!_ " said Ginny, and then burst into tears. "Ron, I'm s-so sorry, I - I shouldn't've touched the book, you know what dad always says, don't trust anything if you c-can't see where it keeps its brain - I'm going t-to be expelled, aren't I - "

"Vhat a good saying," said Adriana. "You should go to medical, small child, bad things have happened to you today."

"You're not gonna be expelled, Ginny, why would you be expelled?" said Ron.

"I, I, it was me, I didn't think so at first, I just couldn't - remember - but I woke up after Halloween with paint all down my front and I was too afraid to tell anyone and then I couldn't - stop him - from making me," she hiccuped, "it was me, Ron, I tried to stop myself I stole mirrors out of the telescopes to fling at people and it didn't help - "

"What, of course it helped, now they're not  _dead_ , they're all going to be  _fine,_ " soothed Ron. He helped Ginny carefully to her feet, collected his wand and the Hat and the shining magic sword he'd somehow pulled from the Sorting Hat. "Here, c'mon, we gotta go to the hospital wing, everything will be fine, okay?" Sniffling, Ginny nodded, and glanced somewhat suspiciously at That One Creepy Quiet Slytherin Kid and His Random Friend Who Doesn't Even Go Here, and leaned on her brother.

They walked down the passageway in somewhat awkward silence, and then stared into the pipe leading upward, which definitely wasn't stairs.

"Uh, Fawkes, thank you a million times for your help, do you maybe know some way to get - back up?" asked Ron hopefully.

Fawkes indeed did, and dragged them up the pipe with the mysterious lightness of phoenix fire, as gently as floating on a cloud. Then they found themselves all standing in Myrtle's bathroom, where Percy was struggling again to rouse himself to consciousness. There was a long, slightly adversarial pause, as Ron and Theodore stared at each other and Ginny flung herself at Percy, who made a confused delighted noise and promptly picked her up. She burrowed into his shoulder and burst into tears again. Ron made an expectant face. "Not that I don't appreciate it, because I really, really do, but  _what_  - "

"Look," said Theo, after a minute, "if Augusta Longbottom asks you if I helped you, tell her yes, but if you tell  _anyone else_ I will find some way to ruin your life, I am not a Merlin-damned Gryffindor and I don't like you and I don't care about your dumbass sister and I was just here with extremely weird backup because I was threatened with dire political consequences, okay? Go tell McGonagall you heroically saved your sister with a fucking magic sword and not only am I definitely not the Heir of fucking Slytherin I was definitely not involved in  _any way_ , got it?"

" ... yeah," said Ron, blinking, "all right."

This he did, from a bed in the hospital wing, with a certain amount of assigning credit to Fawkes where it ought to have gone to the other teenagers who'd been present. Dumbledore, listening to the story with a certain twinkle in his eye, seemed to suspect Ron of hiding something from the story, but he didn't ask. When the story had wound down, and Ron was starting to feel the exhaustion settling into his bones, Dumbledore told him what  _he_ knew of what had happened here, and congratulated him on the immense bravery he must have shown, to summon Fawkes, and even more, to summon the ancient sword of Godric Gryffindor.

And Ron learned exactly who it was that he had fought, that day.

* * *

_April 23, 1993, 4:37 AM. The Great Hall, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

A little while later, Penelope Clearwater sits, quiet, at the Ravenclaw table, as the school throws a party around her, holding hands with Percy.

A little blond first-year is sitting across from them, gazing distantly to where Ginny Weasley is hugging Ron and telling increasingly enthusiastic stories about how he'd rescued her from a giant snake with a magic sword.

"How," says Percy, finally, "did you,"  _of all people_ , goes unsaid, "figure that out?"

"I," said Luna Lovegood, with quiet dignity, "am a Ravenclaw."


	16. Loose Threads (A Tapestry Make)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone, especially those who followed me here from ffnet, for your patience with my update schedule or lack thereof.
> 
> Here ends this fic; there will, however, be a sequel.

* * *

“And _then_ ,” said Adriana, gesticulating wildly, “the big snake she went like ‘RAWR’ and little red hair boy pulled a _sword_ out of this _wobbly hat_ it was _crazy_ -” 

“The Sorting Hat,” corrected Theodore, deeply uncomfortably. “That was the Sorting Hat.” 

Augusta Longbottom was listening to the story with interest, enthroned in her armchair by the great bay window in Longbarrow like the Queen holding court. Jared Nott, who had picked up Theodore and Adriana from Hogwarts and returned them here to debrief, loomed ominously in the doorway with an expression of calculated dis-interest, but was also, of course, paying acute attention. 

Natalia looked fit to burst with jealousy that she had missed all the excitement. “A _sword_?” 

Viktor, however, was only half-heartedly listening; from his position on the couch next to Natalia, where they had been very boredly recovering from their significantly less successful adventure, he was gazing very concernedly at Hermione. She had gone with her uncle to see her Muggles earlier in the evening, wherever it was he had taken them after hexing Viktor and Natalia, while they waited to hear whether Theodore’s quest to save Neville Longbottom (and incidentally several Weasleys) would bear fruit. Upon their return, Hermione had reported with a fixed smile that her Muggles had been duly rescued and returned to a safe location. She was terribly sorry, she’d said, about the miscommunication between her great-uncle and her friends in the dungeons of Malfoy Manor, but it had all worked out fine. 

She had a very still, very calm, very neutral expression as she listened to her roommate relate the story of Salazar Slytherin’s Chamber of Secrets. 

She was, on very careful inspection, violently trembling. 

“A sword!!” repeated Adriana gleefully. “Out of the - what is a _sorting_ hat?” 

“The Sorting Hat,” said Hermione in a flat dead voice like her soul was currently six inches to the left of her body, “is an ancient musical artifact in the shape of a traditional pointed wizard’s hat which is famously kept in the office of the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at all times except on the first day of each school year, and is believed to have been a personal possession of Godric Gryffindor, one of the original founders of the school. Many wizarding families in Britain observe a long-standing tradition of keeping the existence of this artifact secret from their children until they matriculate.” 

Adriana squinted at her. She sounded even more than usual like she’d swallowed a textbook. An _English_ textbook. 

“It’s a magic singing hat that Hogwarts people are superstitious about, apparently,” translated Viktor helpfully, in German. 

“Ah-huh. Right, well, is very magic hat, and big phoenix goes ‘whoosh’ and makes loud noise and -” 

“How do you know the word ‘phoenix’ and not the word ‘sorting’,” complained Theo. 

“It’s a cognate,” supplied Hermione distantly. 

“Hush, child, unless _you_ want to tell the story,” admonished Augusta, and Theo hunched unhappily in on himself in his corner and did not speak further. 

* * *

Fred and George were unusually quiet this evening. 

For a long while, their stillness disappeared unnoticed into the hubbub of the midnight feast, as young Gryffindors shrieked and hugged each other and exchanged stories. After Percy sighed and admitted that, yes, all right, Gryffindoring was allowed in special circumstances, various newly reunited classmates had all begun arguing gleefully about who had Gryffindored the most Gryffindorily. 

Neville, after all, had clearly performed a classically heroic self-sacrifice, but it hadn’t actually, you know, worked? And Percy’s totally _had_ worked but also he had arguably mostly helped by studying the right spell in advance and also by fiercely believing in Ron, which weren’t quite Gryffindor virtues. Percy, smiling like the pride might cause him to physically burst, was of the opinion that it was, obviously, Ron, but Ron insisted determinedly that it must be Ginny, who, remember, totally saved like  _the entire school_ from getting murdered by _actually Voldemort_ for _months_. 

“That was kinda mostly a coincidence though,” pointed out Lavender, “no offense Ginny, you did an incredible job, but it’s not like it was on purpose that Mrs. Norris saw the basilisk in a puddle of water or stuff like that, right?” 

“Well,” said Ginny, uncomfortably, over the rim of her hot chocolate. She’d relaxed considerably while excitedly telling the story, but was still curled tightly in a ball, under a fuzzy blanket Madam Pomfrey had insisted she take with her if she was to be allowed out of the hospital wing at all. 

Neville tilted his head thoughtfully. “Wait,” he said, “but _we_ didn’t die either, and there’s not _usually_ mirrors in that hallway.” 

“Oh,” gasped Lavender, “oh _gosh_ , remember when Ginny got caught stealing mirrors from the Astronomy Tower??” 

There was a general susurrus of impressed murmurs. Ron nodded self-satisfiedly. “See?” 

“Okay,” said Percy, slightly muffled from where he was trapped under most of the Quidditch team who were all determined to hug him at the same time, “but I cannot stress enough that you literally pulled the literal Sword _of Gryffindor_ from the Sorting Hat.” 

“I mean,” said Parvati, who had been hanging out with a lot of Ravenclaws lately, “you know, _objectively speaking_ , Ron got two hundred points from Dumbledore and nobody else got more than a hundred, so.” 

“Dumbledore,” said Percy somewhat grumpily, “didn’t _help_.” 

Fawkes, from quite across the room where he was perched on Dumbledore’s shoulder looking incredibly pleased with himself and leaching blood onto the headmaster’s neon purple bathrobe, shook his head imperiously and nailed Percy in the earlobe with a feather.

“What? Ow??” squeaked Percy. 

“Dumbledore did _too_ help,” explained Ron, snickering, “he sent Fawkes, that totally counts.” 

“Speaking of other people who were involved,” added Ginny, somewhat heartened by all this warmth and celebration and people telling her how brave she’d been and no longer paralyzed by the terror of impending expulsion, “you just reminded me, I tried to get rid of the book but then he mind-controlled Daphne Greengrass to give it back, and,” she fidgeted with her blanket, “maybe, uh, somebody should check if she’s okay?” 

There was an awkward pause, and then everyone looked at Neville. He sighed and got up from the table. 

Eventually, Angelina Johnson, winding down from a rousing game of “who can enchant the most inconveniently shaped food item into a projectile weapon and then hit someone with it” with Lee Jordan and Alicia Spinnet, ambled over to Fred and George and slung an arm around each of their shoulders. 

“So!” she said brightly. “Now that you’re all un-Petrified I can yell at you about your poor decision-making!” 

“Yep,” said Fred dully, “sure,” said George. 

Angelina blinked. “ … wait, are you guys okay?” George made a sort of so-so motion with one hand, and she frowned and sat down on the bench with them. “What’s up? I _know_ it’s not that you’re mad about missing classes.” 

“It’s sort of -” “a long story -” “but we lost something.” 

“You _lost_ something.”  
  
Nod, nod. “When we got Petrified.” “Haven’t been able to find it anywhere.” “Think maybe the basilisk might’ve eaten it.” 

“Something very important to you, clearly,” Angelina observed, eyebrows raised. “Family heirloom or something?” 

“Iiiinnnn a manner of speaking,” hedged George. “Would’ve been,” added Fred wistfully. “We were gonna give it to Ron.” “As a reward for all the heroism, you know.” 

Angelina patted them both on the shoulders. “Well that sucks,” she said, “but you gotta move on, yeah? Everybody’s alive. Also, if you keep moping I don’t get to yell at you, which is no fair.”

The twins giggled a little weakly, but not insincerely.

* * *

When Adriana had finished her story, and Madam Longbottom had patted Theodore on the head and told him he’d done an excellent job and she would of course uphold her end of the bargain, and old Nott had smiled an incredibly unsettling smile and told Hermione he’d see her in two weeks, they had gathered their broomsticks and set off. 

It was a long, cold, quiet trip home to Durmstrang.

Viktor declined to take off and leave the slower flyers behind, this time; Natalia made a half-assed attempt to pretend annoyance at being slowed down, but he could see she was feeling a little nervous about splitting up, too. (Having that many of your bones shattered at once had been something of a learning experience for a couple of teenagers who thought they were ready to get in a fight with a wizard three or four times their age. Also, he kind of didn’t want to let Hermione out of his sight regardless, she looked rather like she might go to pieces if poked gently with a pillow.) 

They got about half a night of sleep, and then it was time for their finals. 

Viktor suspected he had only very narrowly passed his History & Language exam, although he got a bonus point for knowing the name of the interesting British historical figure Godric Gryffindor. Fortunately it was _sixth_ year exams that were actually important for Durmstrang students, since those determined what final-year seminars you were allowed to take as an adult or nearly one, and in any event the _really_ important thing as far as he was concerned was that he’d come back to a letter offering him a spot on the reserve squad of the Bulgarian National Quidditch team for next season. 

Of course, he also got summoned to Karkarov’s office to be personally congratulated, which wasn’t his favorite. “Er, thank you, headmaster,” he said. 

The headmaster smiled down at him from his unreasonable height. “You will, of course, be sure not to let this distract you from your studies?”  
  
He would admittedly be sorely tempted to blow off homework to practice, but he also really wanted to take the seventh-year Transfiguration seminar. The rumours that the instructor was a werewolf who Transfigured himself into a tree every full moon must of course be wildly exaggerated, but it still sounded fascinating. “Of course, headmaster,” he said.

He wasn’t the only one to have an unusual finals week experience. Adriana got full marks without any further participation on her Battle Magic final for repeating under Veritaserum that she had, in fact, totally helped kill a basilisk, for Reasons. 

“She _what_ you _what_ ,” hissed Jarek at Natalia and Hermione, across the duelling floor. 

“It was a really absurd adventure!” complained Natalia, scourgifying blood off her outfit and then rolling her eyes at Jarek’s disgruntled roommate as he half-heartedly insulted her form while she applied pressure to his chest wound. “There was _politics_. It was _terrible_.”

Hermione nodded grimly and deflected Jarek’s textbook-perfect drowning hex into the wall. “Sorry about the politics.” 

Natalia shrugged philosophically. “At least Adri had fun.”  

Hermione, it was clear to all, had not had fun. 

Hermione, quiet as the grave, ground her way with brutal, iron efficiency through the fourth-year exams she’d been ready for at Christmas and the fifth-year exams she’d been studying for with Viktor since. After the last one, Viktor caught her by the arm as she went to stalk silently back to her dorm and said, “come to the library, please?” and she frowned at him but went. 

There was, of course, no one in the library at that particular time. 

He wasn’t at all sure how to start this conversation, so he said, awkwardly, “Adri says maybe we should call you _Miosha_ , closer to your real name, yes?” 

“Um,” said Hermione. “That sounds? Fine?” 

“Right. Okay. I _am_ sorry we all struggle with the British, it is probably very annoying.”

“Of things in my life that I would characterize as having a noticeable negative impact on my well-being,” sighed Hermione, “it’s not high on the list. But thank you.” 

“...right.” How do you ask someone if they’re actually secretly Muggleborn without sounding like you want them to die in a fire, he wondered. Why did he even bother trying to talk to other humans, it was always terrible, flying was better. Flying he got better at over time, even, whereas he was nearly sixteen and somehow still felt like a six-year-old whenever he tried to have a social interaction that didn’t involve flying or hexes. 

“Did, um, did you want to talk about something in particular,” asked Hermione, fidgeting uncomfortably with her fingernails. 

He nodded. “Your er,” he said, “your Muggles?” 

A somewhat heartwrenching choked noise escaped Hermione. “They’re, they’re fine,” she said. 

Clearly they weren’t. “Look, I know they’re your parents,” he said quickly, before he could lose the conversational nerve, and then, as she drew her wand on him, eyes wide and terrified, scrambled to add, “I’m not going to hurt you!”  

“Aren’t you?” said Hermione, harsh and sharp. She lowered her wand, but only slightly. “I know _you_ know Muggles are people, Viktor, but our friends don’t, and you’re not the one who maybe dies if they find out.” 

He frowned. “Dies? Do you really think that? Even after a year and a half - maybe people would be rude but Durmstrang is not evil, that is English propaganda -” 

“You, personally, threw an eleven-year-old down the stairs four months ago.”

“He was -”

“ _Eleven_.” 

Viktor didn’t really have a response for that, so he just sort of hunched over uncomfortably in his chair. 

Hermione sighed. “I’m not saying I don’t trust you, all right? It’s just - I like books and all but I don’t study _this_ hard out of passion for the subject matter. I am only alive right now because the frighteningly wealthy probably-ex-Death-Eater who looks _just_ enough like he could be my great-uncle thinks I’m more useful alive than d-dead,” despite her frantic attempts to wipe them her eyes were welling up, “and that could change at any moment and the web of stupid lies I’ve been weaving for a year and a half gets bigger every day and, and my parents are dead, and I’m _scared._ ” 

“Oh,” said Viktor, quietly, and then, “I am not very good at talking but I can listen?” 

And so, sniffling, she told him the story. 

* * *

Neville walked slowly, and was grateful for the obstacles of dancing classmates and upperclassmen; he was having several feelings about the whole concept of Slytherin House and was a little worried he’d make a fool of himself if he didn’t work through some of them on his way over. 

See, on the one hand, Draco Malfoy existed. The way his housemates deferred to him, the way they orbited around him like he was the sun, said some pretty damning things about the depth of the Dark’s grip on their community, even ten years after You-Know-Who’s distinct lack of death. Slytherins were Death Eaters, these days, everyone knew that, even if in the past the house had graduated such eminent Light witches and wizards as Merlin and Neville’s grandmother. 

On the other hand, Neville remembered Nott helping him separate Ron and Draco at the duelling club, and now Ginny was saying that Greengrass had been a fellow victim of the evil diary, not a supporter of the Heir of Slytherin. 

On the third hand, Ron had pulled Neville aside and quietly explained that Nott, who’d been even later to the feast than the assorted injured Weasleys, had apparently not been acting out of selflessness but rather had gotten manipulated into helping by Neville’s Gran, which he was not supposed to tell anybody but thought Neville of all people ought to know. And while Neville was honestly completely prepared to believe this was within his Gran’s power, something about the story rang strange to him. When Ron had described Fawkes diving into the path of the basilisk to deliver him the diary he had then stabbed, his storytelling where it had elsewhere been so strong had been faltering and uncomfortable in a way that suggested that was the part _Nott_ had played and been so eager to disclaim. You could force an unwilling person to do a lot of things with the power of politics, Neville felt, but that didn’t really seem like one of them. 

Which meant … he wasn’t sure what it meant, was the problem. 

Some of the Slytherins might not be evil? Evil people were capable of being heroic sometimes anyway? Some of the Slytherins had been pressured into being evil but could theoretically be turned from the side of darkness by being shown true love and friendship??

Was he even qualified to do that. He felt kind of like he was not qualified to do that. 

“What do you want, Longbottom,” growled Nott, snapping him out of his concerned daze. He appeared to be trying quite hard to set Neville on fire entirely with his brain. 

“Uh,” said Neville, who had apparently been standing next to their table for some amount of time. 

“Go away!!” shrilled Malfoy. He appeared to be trying quite hard to set _everything_ on fire entirely with his brain. Honestly, Neville really disliked him but this was pretty understandable, all things considered. 

“Why are you _still here,_  Longbottom,” said Nott pointedly, when he didn’t move. 

Neville winced, and said, “uh,” again, stupidly. “I uh … I got delegated as the most, uh, diplomatic Gryffindor, to, uh -”  
  
“So would that be more or less diplomatic than a brick to the face, would you say,” wondered Tracy Davis, smirking. 

“Probably … less ….”

Nott elbowed Davis. “What is your _diplomatic mission,_ honestly, Longbottom, we don’t have time for this.” 

“I uh. I am supposed to ask if Greengrass is okay? And if we can do anything for her?”  
  
Everyone in the vicinity looked in surprise at Daphne Greengrass, who turned an alarming shade of pinkish grey. Nott looked very nearly personally offended. “What? No! I’m fine!!” she said, in the universally recognizable voice of the clearly not fine. 

“W...hy,” asked Davis, looking between her roommate and Neville, “... would you … do that … ever?” 

Neville felt that it was slightly unfair to expect him to know the answer to this question, and also, additionally, _deeply_ unfair to expect him to answer it out loud. He was not a Slytherin or, in fact, any good at even regular politics, but he was like 97% sure it would be rude to tell the entire Slytherin table that Ginny said Greengrass had tried to save her from the Heir of Slytherin and failed. Which was the only answer he could actually think of. “Um,” he said, “because of, um,” wait he had a brilliant idea, “she tried to save Malfoy which arguably worked and we disapprove of that and don’t want credit for it but also it accidentally helped us, so.” 

They all stared at him. 

Maybe this was not a brilliant idea? He had felt so clever for like two whole seconds there. 

“I, ah, I am happy to accept rightful accolades for my efforts on behalf of the Noble House of Malfoy, which I obviously did not share information about with my classmates for safety reasons,” said Daphne Greengrass, after yet another uncomfortably long pause. 

“Right! Excellent! Cool!” said Neville, sensing that it was time to leave before his brief flash of brilliance wore off and he said something incredibly stupid, “bye!” 

\---

(In a corner of the castle, with a magic map carefully stored in the pocket of a man it wasn’t, a rat contemplated its options. 

The Weasleys were clearly no longer safe. They were going to keep throwing themselves headlong into Dark-Lord-shaped problems. But he couldn’t very well just go find a different wizarding family to live with; there were too many Weasleys scurrying around to run randomly into someone. He could, he supposed, go live with a random _Muggle_ family, but Muggles didn’t respect rats the way wizards did. And then he might get eaten by a Kneazle or something horrible like that. 

He … didn’t very much _want_ to go looking for the Dark Lord … 

… but if he was going to come back anyway … 

… where was it that the erstwhile stammering Defense professor from the previous year had gone that he’d come back with a spirit in his head? Romania? 

Perhaps it was time for a trip.) 

 


End file.
